


X-Men: Reloaded

by veecamaro3



Category: X-Men (Alternate Timeline Movies), X-Men (Movieverse), X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - X-Men Fusion, Colossus - Freeform, Cyclops - Freeform, Dazzler - Freeform, Erik Lehnsherr - Freeform, F/M, Havok - Freeform, Logan (2017), Logan Howlett - Freeform, Mystique - Freeform, Post-X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009), Post-X-Men: Apocalypse (2016), Pre-X-Men: Days of Future Past, Professor Charles Xavier, Wolverine - Freeform, Wolverine: Old Man Logan, X-Men Inspired, X-Men References, X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014), X-Men: Days of Future Past References, X-Men: First Class (2011), X-Men: First Class Fix It, X-Men: First Class References, Young Charles Xavier, banshee - Freeform, magneto - Freeform, quicksilver - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-29
Updated: 2020-07-06
Packaged: 2021-03-03 20:21:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 105,796
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24981484
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/veecamaro3/pseuds/veecamaro3
Summary: Not to toot my own horn, but I consider my X-Men fan fic to be the peak of my abilities. I'm pretty damn proud of it.It starts out with Charles and Erik recruiting mutants in 1962. They find Leah Hayes in a bar with Logan. Logan turns them down (the highlight of First Class, honestly) and instead gain Leah, a mutant with aura perception and life force absorption. (I know what you're thinking. 'Hey, that's just Rogue!' No, it's not. It's WAY FREAKING COOLER). But I won't spoil it.I'm currently working on DOFP era, but when I hit a common writer's block I jump ahead to part 6 and write about what happens after Leah and the X-Men release Wolverine. Let's just say, she's on Stryker's radar now.P.S. I need an X-Men name for Leah...any ideas would be appreciated.
Comments: 12
Kudos: 11





	1. No More Back Alley Poker Games for Me

**PART ONE**

_Mutation: it is the key to our evolution. It has enabled_

_us to evolve from a single-celled organism into the_

_dominant species on the planet. This process_ _is slow,_

_normally taking thousands and thousands of years._

_But every few hundred millennia, evolution leaps forward._

_October 21 st, 1962_

_Brooklyn, New York_

The lighting in Sonny’sBar is dim. Barely any sunlight filters through the windows, paned with many different colors, but what does manage to make it through dances in sparkles on the scrubbed dark wood tables, where men who came in for a late afternoon drink sit and chatter amongst themselves.

I sit at the bar, quietly sipping a beer, trying to ignore the pounding in my head from yet another headache. Next to me, Logan lights a cigar and takes a long drag. He closes his eyes and lets the smoke out through his mouth. Any other time, I would revel in the comforting, woodsy scent. At the moment it just wages war with my headache.

I glare at him. “Do you have to do that right now?” I grumble.

“I smoke when I want,” Logan says in his low, growling voice.

My hand tightens around the bottle and I roll my eyes. “I could just leave, you know,” I pointlessly threaten him. “Then where would you get your kicks?”

Logan raises a dark eyebrow in my general direction. “I don’t need you, you know,” he mocks. “I could find anyone else in a heartbeat.”

In response, I take a long drink. He’s right. I need him a whole lot more than he needs me. I stay with him because in the twelve years I’ve had my powers, he’s the first person I’ve come across that's similar to myself. Similar in that we are different from everyone else. And I’m scared of being alone again. The only problem is, Logan’s the biggest bag of dicks I’ve ever met.

I mean, I can’t blame the guy. I’ve been alive for only twenty-four years. Logan, on the other hand, was born in 1832. That’s a hell of a long time to be alive and still look as good as he does, and still want to keep living, for that matter. He’s got unbelievable regenerative abilities that help keep him young, and three bone claws on each hand that he can extract and retract from his arms out through his knuckles at will. He disguises himself as a human well. The only thing that draws attention to Logan is his incredibly charming personality.

Me, on the other hand…well, I’m dangerous. Logan can be, too, I suppose. He’s a raging ball of wrath that won’t hesitate to slice your balls off if he’s in the mood. I prefer to keep my anger reigned in, to prevent an outburst that will inevitably harm others. After all, an outburst is what set me on my lonesome path almost a decade ago.

Ever since I was twelve years old, I’ve had to avoid skin contact with people. My touch is deadly. I don’t know why, but when I touch people, I absorb the life from their body. If I keep contact long enough, I can kill them. I’ve never actually killed someone, but I certainly got close…

This power doesn’t apparently work on Logan, which is why we’ve been able to enjoy countless frivolous nights together. My other power is fair game. I have what I call aura perception. Kind of like what a psychic does. I perceive everyone’s life energy, everyone’s aura, constantly. Talk about anxiety. I have everyone else’s emotions to deal with on top of my own. The only plus side is, once I single out someone’s aura, I can read it and their mind. I rarely read thoughts, and I’m not that good at it. Living a life of subtlety, I’ve learned to keep the only thoughts in my head my own. All that went out the door a few weeks ago, when I met Logan.

I was at a bar much like I am now. Having a drink, minding my own business. Ignoring how the men stared because it’s not proper for a woman to dress like I do, act like I do. Then Logan arrived. He stood next to me as he ordered a drink. Normally I wouldn’t have bothered to look his way, but he had an aura of such anger and confliction radiating off of him that I had to pay him some mind. He noticed my look. Gave me a once-over. I did the same thing, only I was appraising his mind.

He introduced himself as Jimmy, which struck me as odd because that was not how he identified himself inside. Casually I said, “Stop lying to yourself, Logan,” before draining my whiskey.

We became acquaintances after that, more out of mutual respect of each other’s differences than an actual attraction. I mean, there’s _physical_ attraction, or else we wouldn’t be where we are now. He’s tall, dark, mysterious. His near-black hair is slightly long but combed up on the sides, giving him a wolfish appearance. Thick, short facial hair lines the lower half of his cheeks and meets the hairline by his temples, while his upper lip and the center of his chin remain bald. Eyes like the blackness of night are always intense, much like his body language, and not once have I seen him smile.

But our strange abilities drew us together. Logan didn’t take too well to my knowing his entire life without his permission, but there was a part of him that seemed grateful he didn’t have to put up a continuous front around me. I think that’s the real reason he’s dealt with me for the past few weeks before he departs for Vietnam.

“When do you leave again?” I ask Logan.

“Few days.” He drains his bourbon and lifts a hand to the bartender to refill his glass. “You gonna be all right without me?” he adds snarkily.

“I’m not going to miss you,” I tell him. “I’m counting down the days until you leave.”

Logan puffs on his cigar and taps the end in an ashtray. “Mmhmm.”

The bar gets stuffy. I peel off my black leather jacket and drape it over my lap. I hook the short heel of my boot against the rung of the stool and wiggle my leg up and down impatiently. The heel squeaks against the wood.

Logan eyes my leg a couple of times before balling up his fist and growling, “Would you cut it out?”

“My, my, someone’s testy today.” I steady my leg.

“Yeah, well, you would be, too, if you were shipping off to another war.”

“I thought you liked to fight.” I lower my voice and nudge him in the ribs. “And you can’t die, remember? What’s there to worry about?”

“It’s not me, it’s Victor,” Logan says darkly.

Ah, right. Victor Creed. Logan’s brother. If Logan’s a hothead, Victor’s is full of flaming coals. I only met him once and I didn’t care for him. He’s rude, he’s an asshole, and he enjoys the war way more than Logan does. Killing is enjoyable to him. He’s got that healing factor, too, and he definitely uses it to his advantage. At least Logan has some morals, a little more common sense.

“Just shoot him in the head whenever he acts up,” I suggest lightly.

“I’ll shoot you in the head,” Logan mutters into the brim of his glass.

“I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that. I gotta pee. Watch my jacket,” I say, and hop off the stool, leaving the jacket in my place.

In the bathroom, I do my business and wash my hands. My reflection shows little frizzies poking up all over the top of my dark brown hair, so I take some water and pat them down. I dry my hands with a paper towel and then wipe the remaining dampness on my pants as I head back out to the bar.

The bell over the door jingles and in walks two men. Out if habit, I touch two fingers to my temple and cast out my senses, doing my typical Are-You-Human-Or-Not game, and find to my incredible surprise that they’re just like Logan and I. What are the chances that two people as strangely…unique…as us show up at our exact location? That makes four people I’ve met in the past few weeks that are different from other humans after half a lifetime of thinking I was the only one in the world. I press a little farther into the men’s minds and find they’re heading for Logan.

Both strangers are very attractive in their own way. The taller man walks with confidence, and a hint of arrogance. Casually dressed in a black turtle neck and brown leather jacket, his skin appears lighter under smooth, dirty blonde hair.

The other man is quite a few years younger than his counterpart and about a head shorter. He has an air of grace about him, with his expensive beige overcoat and somewhat long brown hair, neatly combed. Even with the subdued interior light, his bright blue eyes sparkle.

Logan lifts the cigar to his lips as the tall man approaches him on the left and says politely, with a slight German accent, “Excuse me. I’m Erik Lehnsherr.”

Annoyed to the core, Logan lowers his cigar. The younger man introduces himself in a smooth, irresistible voice: “Charles Xavier.”

Without missing a beat – or even glancing at either of the men – Logan snaps, “Go fuck yourselves.” Hardly deterred, he takes a drag from his cigar.

The taller man, Erik Lehnsherr, shrugs at his companion and turns to leave. The other, Charles Xavier, gives Logan a small, sorrowful look before lifting his head and boring his piercing blue eyes into mine. I stand there like a deer in headlights. Before I can react, I feel him snooping through my thoughts.

The dull pounding in my head from earlier magnifies tenfold the deeper he goes. I grip my head and huff in agony just as Charles raises his hands in a similar fashion and lets out a groan of pain. My knees wobble under the pressure of the sensation that my brain is expanding. Tormenting scenes from my life, all the way back to my childhood, flash in front of my eyes at top speed as, despite the aching, the fucking idiot still searches my mind.

“Leah?” Logan puts his hand on my shoulder, then his head whips around to Charles. “Are you doing this?” he snarls.

I ball my hands tightly into fists and picture walls appearing around the periphery of my mind, effectively cutting off the mental connection with Charles, and gasp, “What the hell?” I wanted to yell, or at least raise my voice, but I’m a little breathless. Once my mind is calm, there’s odd sensation of déjà vu, like I’ve felt a similar presence in my head before.

“I’m sorry!” Charles Xavier says, and he actually does sound apologetic. Well, I would be, too, if I’d seen all that.

The bar has fallen silent. Everyone stares at the four of us as we make a scene. Grumbling to himself, Logan throws some bills on the counter, grabs my arm and points threateningly at Charles and Erik. “Outside. Now.”

Logan drags me out the front door, closely followed by the two men. The late afternoon sun burns my eyes and sends sharp pains to the back of my skull. I rub my temples. Logan sees this action and rounds on Charles.

“Hey, would you quit it?” he yells in his face.

“I’m not doing anything!” Charles says, holding his hands up in a gesture of defense. He appears rightly frightened of Logan.

“It’s fine,” I say. When my eyes adjust, I notice Erik has my jacket, which irks me for some reason. I make a grab for it and he releases it quickly, as if dropping a snake.

“A simple ‘thank you’ would do,” he says wirily. 

I twist the fabric in my fingers and find Charles staring at me with those astoundingly blue eyes. “How did you do that?” he asks in wonderment. “Shield me from your mind, I mean.”

“I don’t know,” I snap.

“Look, what the hell do you want?” Logan asks.

“We came here to offer you a job,” Charles tells him. “But I suppose your earlier sentiment still stands?”

“Damn right.”

So, Charles turns to me.

“What, you didn’t get who you came for so you’re picking up the sloppy seconds?” I say, irritated. “No, thanks.”

“You don’t even know what the job is,” Erik says.

“I wouldn’t mind repeating what Logan told you a few minutes ago,” I say heatedly.

“What a charmer.” Erik looks down at Charles. “We have a long list. We’re just scratching the surface.”

“I know, but _this_ is something I hadn’t anticipated,” Charles replies in a low voice. His eyes dart to mine for a brief moment. I press into his head, like he had with me, in order to see what he means.

Charles lifts two fingers to his temple and I suddenly get the urge to stop. I calmly exit his mind and stare between the three of them blankly.

I blink a few times as my body becomes my own again. “What the hell was that?”

Charles smiles at me. I hear his voice, but his lips don’t move. _You’re not the only one with mind powers._

“What the hell was what?” Logan demands when no one answers me out loud.

“N-nothing,” I say, and narrow my eyes at Charles.

“So, we’d like to talk business, if you’re up for it,” Charles tells me promptly.

“Um, well…” I say slowly.

Logan throws me an incredulous look. Apparently my refusal to outright deny them rubs him the wrong way. “You’re considering it?”

I shrug, hold my arms out in perplexity. “I don’t know! It wouldn’t hurt to see what they want.”

Logan scoffs and shakes his head. I pointlessly lower my voice and say, “What else am I going to do once you’re gone?”

“I don’t know, go find another poker game?”

“That’s no way for me to keep living my life, Logan.”

He still shakes his head irritably. “Fine. You want to team up with these lunatics, be my guest. I’m out of here.” He turns his back and stalks away.

“Logan!” I call. “Just – wait!”

“Bye, Leah!” he says loudly, waving his hand without turning around. “It’s been nice knowing you!”

“Don’t leave, you asshole!” I shout. Logan just shoves his hands in his pockets and lets out a barking laugh before he rounds a corner and disappears. I turn back to the two men. “Make this quick, I need to go after him.”

“Doesn’t seem like he wants you around,” Erik idly comments.

“You know what? Shut up, nobody asked you.”

Erik chuckles.

After a brief, awkward moment of silence, Charles sighs quickly and says, “Well, we haven’t been properly introduced. I’m Charles Xavier.” He holds out his hand.

“Leah Hayes.” I shake his hand briefly.

We look expectantly at Erik, who begrudgingly extends his hand. “Erik Lehnsherr.”

I take his hand, but we break apart immediately as our skin sparks like a jolt of electricity. Erik glares at me. I struggle to keep my face emotionless.

 _Hmm, that was odd_. Must be some sort of static electricity. It was more powerful, though, like when I touch humans. But I thought it didn’t work on people like me, people like Logan. After all, it didn’t work on Charles.

“Care for a drink?” Charles asks, as if nothing happened.

Erik agrees and I refuse. I need this meeting to be as short as possible. My choice seems to irritate Erik due to a tactful eye roll he aims at Charles, who just tells him calmly, “Why don’t you go inside, I’ll meet you in a bit.”

When Charles and I are alone, he smiles impishly.

“What?” I say.

“Come, walk with me.”

We head in the opposite direction Logan went. I look back longingly at the corner where he disappeared, hoping he’ll wait for me at our motel room once I’m done here.

“I have an estate in Westchester County, and I’d like you to join me and a few of my friends there,” Charles begins.

“A house party, huh?”

Charles seems to wrestle back a sarcastic remark before regaining composure. “No. We’re using it as a training facility.”

“What are you training for?”

“Erik and I gathered other mutants and devised a team that I hope to train well enough to help the CIA bring down a particularly cruel mutant named Sebastian Shaw.”

I stop in my tracks and let out an incredulous laugh. “You’re joking, right?” At Charles’ flat expression, I say, “Okay, you’re serious, then. What do you mean, ‘other mutants’?”

“Other mutants,” Charles repeats, not quite understanding. “Recruits.” After a moment, he adds, “Don’t you know what you are? You’re a mutant, like me. And like my friend Erik, and your positively delightful companion Logan. Mutants are still a rare species, but they are growing, and the possibilities of their abilities are endless.”

“Mutant, huh? That’s not exactly the term I’d use.” Freak is generally what I’ve called myself all these years. We resume walking.

“There is a mutation in our DNA, carried on the father’s side, that is most commonly activated during puberty. Stress and extreme trauma may also be a trigger. Mutations vary as well. They can be something as minor as a physical alteration or as vast as reality manipulation.”

“How do you know so much about…mutants?”

Charles tucks his hands in his pockets with a sly grin. “I studied us.”

“So, what do you want me for? Or should I say, what did you want Logan for before you had to settle with me?”

“I’m not settling. I just didn’t know you were here in New York.”

“What are you talking about? How did you know where we were at all?” I ask.

“A few weeks ago, I was able to touch the mind of every mutant on the planet and get their coordinates,” Charles explains. “I felt your mind, but you were so far away at the time we were recruiting.”

That explains the déjà vu. I was on a train to New York, somewhere in Illinois. It seemed more than just feeling my mind though. I thought it was a dream, when my life sort of flashed before my eyes. But it still doesn't explain what Charles means. I shrug off the thought for the moment. “If you’re not recruiting anymore, why were you looking for Logan?”

Charles hesitates before saying, “One of our recruits was killed during an attack on an offsite CIA base, Division X. We were lucky to come out with the remaining four members of our little team.”

“I’ve got to say, telling me that this is a life-or-death mission isn’t a great selling point.” I look over at Charles, appraising him once more. His clothes are fancier than I originally thought. The expensive overcoat, lavender button-up shirt, pressed pants, leather shoes. Probably all designer. All screaming _I’m rich._ “Are you CIA?”

“No,” he says with a small chuckle. “I suppose you could say I was recruited myself, at Oxford about a month ago. I had just published a thesis on mutation, which helped one particular CIA agent locate me.”

Oxford guy, huh? Yeah, he seems like the posh, stuck-up type. He’s even English. We turn right at the next street corner.

“So, the CIA knows mutants exist. They put you up at some secret base. It was attacked – by who?” I ask.

“Sebastian Shaw. He’s, well, he’s essentially trying to raise mutant ascendancy by way of nuclear warfare. He threatened a U.S. government official to advocate the installation of nuclear missiles in Turkey. Now, he’s forcing the Soviet Union to retaliate and place their missiles in Cuba, aimed right at the United States.”

Again, I stop in my tracks. “Look, politics aren’t really my thing. It seems like you’re in way over your head here and I honestly don’t know how a band of misfit mutants are going to bring this guy down.”

“Shaw has a small army of mutants, including one he took from us, and we have a small army of mutants. We’re training to fight them, and if need be, stop a war.”

“You may want to get Logan back, then. Or maybe try his brother. He loves a war. The two of them could probably take on Shaw single-handedly.”

“I’m not forcing anyone to join us if they don’t want to,” Charles says. “I’m giving you an opportunity, just like I gave the others. You can take it, or you can leave it.”

I examine Charles with curiosity, weighting my options. On one hand, I’ll be alone again after Logan’s off overseas. Then where would I be? Back to the poker tables, cheating my way to my next meal and cheap motel? I’d at least have a place to sleep if I went with this Charles Xavier. And he does have genuine motives, I sense that with my _mutant_ -power.

On the other hand, I could potentially set myself up to die. I mean, what is this? CIA. Soviet missiles. World-dominating mutants. It’s like James Bond gone seriously wrong.

I scratch my head, take a deep inhale and say, “All right. I’m in.”

Logan isn’t in the room when Erik, Charles and I take a taxi to our motel. In fact, all his stuff has been cleared out. I try not to be so broken up about his leaving the way he did when there was never a promise of us staying together, nor is there a chance that I’ll ever see him again.

I hurriedly pack my belongings. For being I basically live on the run, I’ve acquired a large amount of clothes. As much as I hate to wear them, I have few dresses – slim, sexy, but not too revealing – that I wear to poker matches. It provides a decent distraction because when I actually put an effort into my appearance I can draw looks for miles. My poker skill is another story. I thought it would be cheating _too_ much if I read their minds, so I play at a beginner’s level and read my fellow players’ auras at the matches. It’s delightful.

When I return downstairs Charles steps out of the back seat to help me with my bags. I’m tempted to tell him that I don’t need his help, but I figure he’s just being polite. He puts my bags in the trunk, gestures me inside, and now I’m not so grateful for his politeness because I’m tucked between Erik and Charles for the hour-long ride to Westchester.

“Fancy estate in New York, and you don’t have your own car?” I growl as I wiggle my arms around to try to fit between Erik’s broad shoulders and Charles’s lean ones.

Erik throws off waves of irritation at my comment. I don’t care. Something didn’t sit well with me when I first saw him and I have a feeling we’re not going to get along.

“Yes, I’ve got my own car,” Charles says. “However, only the two-seater is running, so a third person wouldn’t have fit if we’d brought one back, would they?”

I grunt and stare out of the cab’s dirty windshield.

“And such a lovely one we found,” Erik mutters sarcastically.

I’m about to tell him he could shove his opinion up his ass but Charles hastily interrupts me with, “So, Leah, tell us about yourself.”

This simple question throws me off guard. I've thought so little of myself for so long that I don't really know where to begin.

“I’m nothing special," I finally say. "Been in the foster system in California for as long as I can remember. I’ve been in more homes than you’d believe.” I hold up one hand and inspect my fingers. “I tended to scare the other children.”

Charles stares at my hand while Erik gives an appreciative huff. “What else did you do besides scare children?” Erik asks.

“Not much, really. I ran away from my last foster home when I was seventeen. Been on the run for seven years.”

“Logan mentioned a poker game?” Erik continues, almost as if he’s genuinely curious about my life all of a sudden.

“I started playing four years ago on the streets. I sucked. But I noticed when I read my opponents’ aura, their energy changed despite their poker faces. I could call their bluff and win the game. First time I got a winning streak, I put a target on my back. I got the hell out of dodge and learned to be more careful.”

“Why not get a real job?”

“No papers. Proof of who I am. Besides, a desk job would be so _boring_. I make money scamming underground poker tournaments. But I have to keep moving around or else they’d start to catch on. I’ve lived all around the U.S., until I found something worth staying for in New York.”

Erik huffs in a disgusted way. “You mean Logan? How’d you meet such a charming scumbag like him, anyway?”

I look Erik square in the eye and say, “Picked him up in a bar.” With a smirk, Erik turns his head to look out of the window.

“Speaking of Logan, your mind–” I glance at the cab driver and change my wording before continuing to address Charles “–you must be really strong to have found all of, well, _us_ , like that.”

“I had help,” Charles says. “From Cerebro.”

“Cerebro?”

Charles brings his fingers to his temple and lowers his head in the cab driver’s direction. The driver starts to hum and seems distracted now. “It was a modified radar installation that Hank McCoy designed,” Charles explains. “It amplified my power. It was unfortunately destroyed in the attack on Division X.”

“And who is Hank McCoy?”

“An undercover mutant for the CIA who is no longer undercover because Charles is such an amazing telepath,” Erik says snippily.

Charles’s lightly freckled cheeks flush. “Yes, I accidentally exposed him. But it didn’t turn out to be all bad. His boss seemed alright with it, due to the fact that he brought in three more mutants into his facility and let us create a sort of base for the new mutant division.”

“I guess that worked out,” I say.

“Not for the boss,” Erik says. “All of the humans were killed during the attack.”

“Why didn’t you try to stop Shaw then? You two seem pretty sure of yourselves.”

They exchange glances over my head. “We weren’t there,” Charles reluctantly admits. “We thought we had a lead on Shaw. Erik, Moira – she’s the CIA agent that found me at Oxford – and a small CIA team went to Russia to find him.”

“Well that wasn’t a very good lead, since Shaw essentially came right to you guys,” I unnecessarily point out, making Erik groan in frustration and Charles hang his head.

“Yes, we know,” Charles says. “We were working out some faults. We’re all together now, at my estate. I won’t separate us again.”

The only sound in the taxi now is the driver’s humming and the dull drone of the engine as we make our way from the city into the countryside. Endless buildings and paved streets are replaced by trees and bushes and dirt roads. Out here, I can actually appreciate the clear, blue sky.

“Why don’t you two tell me about _your_ selves?” I say, suddenly hit with a bout of curiosity I quickly attribute to the splendid view of nature.

With a sideways glint, Erik casually waves his hand in Charles’s direction, apparently dismissing my question and inviting Charles to answer instead.

“Er – well,” Charles says, adjusting himself in his seat. “I’ve been studying at Oxford for the past, oh, fourteen years?”

In my attempt to gasp, I choke on air and start to cough. When I’m able to breathe again, I say, “Fourteen years? In college? _Why?”_

“I earned multiple Ph.D.’s,” Charles explains with a frown. “I suppose it wouldn’t interest you that I graduated Harvard at sixteen, then?” he sniffs.

“Know-it-all,” I grumble, and Erik snickers.

“He wanted to try out the girls of America and the ones overseas,” Eric says. “Use his abilities to pick up women as well as ace all his classes.”

“That is not – okay, that is not _entirely_ true,” Charles says, scowling.

“Which part?” I ask. “The girls or the classes?”

“Well, the classes,” Charles says.

Erik and I laugh, and I think maybe I misjudged him.

“What about you, Erik?” I say. “What are some dark, hidden secrets of your past?”

The back seat goes quiet again. I was only joking, but I appear to have touched a nerve. Erik grinds his teeth, the muscles in his jaw flex. After a few moments of silence he says, “Oh, look, we’re here.”

I lean forward and stare out of the windshield as the cab turns onto a long gravel drive surrounded by large trees. About a mile in, looming over the horizon across acres and acres of lush, green grass, up levels of hill cut expertly into the ground and decorated with stone steps and trim bushes, is an enormous gray stone mansion. Pristine gardens trail us as the cab rolls along the gravel road and pulls up in a roundabout in front of a circular fountain.

We exit the cab and Charles pays the driver while I retrieve my bags from the trunk. I stand ogling at the vast mansion with my mouth open. “Holy crap,” I mutter under my breath.

“I take it my home is to your liking?” Charles asks as he comes to my side, hands in his pockets.

“I’ll say.”

“It was one of the first properties built in New York. The estate is two thousand acres.”

Before I can get another choice curse of bewilderment in, Erik quips, “I don’t know how you survived, living in such hardship.”

Charles throws a discerning look Erik’s way before gesturing me inside. “Come on, I’ll introduce you to everyone.” He goes up the three steps leading to the small porch; right beyond lies grand double front doors. Charles leads us into the wide-open foyer and I get the sudden feeling of being inside a museum. Everything is dark wood floors, polished banisters, crystal chandeliers, expensive rugs, fancy end-tables and immaculate vases and paintings and portraits. Very Look-But-Don’t-Touch.

I sense Charles watching me expectantly, so I say honestly, “It’s really beautiful.”

He smiles. “The others are in the kitchen. I’ve left them in charge of dinner and I hope I’m not disappointed.”

I hear arguing as we go down a long hall off to the right. An archway leads to a giant kitchen that appears to have been taken straight from a restaurant. Unlike a restaurant, it’s a complete mess. What must be every single pot and pan and utensil is out on the counter, stove, in the sink. All kinds of food litter chopping boards and the remaining counter space, even the floor. And to my astonishment, four young people that look about my age are the source of the yelling.

“No, Sean. You can’t put the pasta in the water if it’s not boiling yet–”

“You know, being a science geek doesn’t mean you know _everything_ –”

“It’s common sense–”

“Ow, Alex, don’t swing that meat mallet around, you hit my arm–”

“Then don’t put your arm next to the meat mallet–”

“You’re such a jerk–”

Charles clears his voice loudly. All four of them jump and spin around with astonished, guilty faces. They’re a mess, splattered with flour and goop from some sort of tan slop in a mixing bowl.

“Charles! You’re home early,” says the only girl in the room besides me, a tall blonde with brown eyes and a pointy nose. She wipes her long hair away from her face, smearing a trail of flour along her cheek.

“I leave you alone for a couple hours and you destroy the kitchen!” Charles carefully steps over the large marble tiles splattered with food. “I’d hoped at least one of you could come up with something edible while we were away.”

“I think the vegetables are good,” says a tanned, muscular guy with short white-blonde hair. He adjusts the sweatshirt tied around his waist and pulls at the dark blue tank top. His green eyes send a tingling sensation from my scalp to my toes when we look at each other. He’s got that sexy, bad boy vibe that’s honestly only resistible due to the fact that he looks like a jackass.

“Who’s this?” one boy asks. He gazes at me with a blank look, but there’s no hostility in his features. I notice he’s the only one that isn’t dressed in a gray sweat outfit. He pushes his black-rimmed glasses, which have a fine layer of flour on them, up his nose. He’s tall and lanky in his brown pants and checkered shirt, and his brown hair is in a choppy bowl-cut. Total science geek.

“Everyone, meet Leah Hayes,” Erik says, with a hint of annoyance, as he goes around one of the long counters and sits down on a stool.

“Hey,” I say with a sheepish smile, and give a small wave.

The remaining member, another lanky kid with long, shaggy dirty blond hair, green eyes and a hint of acne, suddenly smiles broadly and drawls out, “Welcome to the family!” before lunging forward to embrace me in a backbreaking hug I didn’t think his skinny form had the strength for. “I’m Sean. Sean Cassidy. Or Banshee.”

“Uh, Banshee?” I repeat as I straighten up and stretch out my limbs to make sure they’re still attached to my body.

He wiggles his eyebrows pretentiously. “CIA codenames.”

“Okay…” I say.

“Gotta check my noodles!” he sings, and then goes over to a large pot that has just now started to boil.

“The pasta won’t be edible,” Science Geek says calmly. “You let it sit in cold water for too long.”

“Whatever, dude…”

Science Geek turns his attention on me and extends his hand. I take it appreciatively. He’s _really_ tall. The back of my head almost touches my neck when I look up to meet his eyes. “Hank McCoy.”

“Oh, right. The CIA mutant,” I say.

“Former,” Hank says bashfully, and ducks away so the girl can take his place. With a bright white smile, she says, “I’m Raven. Charles has probably told you all about me.”

“Sorry, no.”

Raven glowers at Charles. “Really, Charles? Your own sister?”

“You two are related?” I ask, looking between them and seeing no similarities.

“She’s adopted,” Charles says blithely.

“Rightfully so, apparently,” Raven says.

Charles shoves her away with a grin. “Lastly is Alex.” He indicates Mr. Muscles leaning against the counter.

“Hey,” he says coolly, and then turns away. Charming.

I nod my head slowly, glancing in turn from Alex to Raven to Hank to Sean, then over to brooding Erik and lastly to Charles. I don’t sense any unity, any form of a team. For Christ’s sake, more than half of us look like _kids_.

“So, we’re the team that’s supposed to stop World War Three, huh?”

A few of them glance nervously at each other, or the floor. Sean offers up a wide, childish grin.

We’re doomed.


	2. A Freak Among Mutants

_October 22 nd, 1962_

_Westchester County, New York_

When I wake up the sun shines brightly through the four long windows in my new bedroom. I push back the thick down comforter and squint through the sunshine with a tired groan. The light hurts my head. I hoped sleep would make the headache lessen, but I guess not. Maybe food will help.

For a moment, I can’t remember where I am. This room is infinitely nicer than the motel I spent the previous night in. The bed has soft beige sheets, maybe even Egyptian cotton. What looks like polished hand-carved furniture adorn the room. There’s a large deep red rug in the center of the dark wood floor to match the red drapes on the windows, an empty fireplace under a bare mantle, over which a large antique frame is mounted, and a chaise lounge seat at the foot of the huge bed.

I unenthusiastically emerge from my cocoon of blankets and stumble to the bathroom. It’s huge in here, with a white claw-footed bathtub and dual sinks. I go pee on my porcelain throne and run a bath, because oddly there is no shower. When the water is hot I pretend to expertly add bath salts and bubbles. A strange aroma assaults my nose and I instantly regret my decision, but I just shrug and undress and lower myself into the hot tub and relax.

After dinner last night, Charles led me up to the third floor and gave me the room across the hall from his. It has a nice view of the wide expanse of acres, only mired by a giant, ugly satellite some miles out on the grounds.

Charles also gave me a pair of his old pajamas to wear, most likely from reading my mind to find that I hadn’t washed any of my clothes in a long while. He left a light blue t-shirt and matching checkered flannel bottoms on the chaise while I was in the bathroom. I found myself giving them a swift sniff when I picked them up, then smiling when I realized they smelled a little bit like Charles. Like soap and some sort of musty cologne.

I scrub myself clean, wash my hair, and then emerge and drain and dry the tub. I engulf myself in a giant fluffy white bathrobe hanging on the back of the door and look down at Charles’s pajamas on the floor. I pick them up and go back out to the room and dump the contents of my bag onto the chaise. I paw through dirty jeans and shirts, smelly socks and underwear. My dresses are all wrinkled. I suppose I could just wear the pajamas until I wash my clothes.

There’s a soft knock on my door. I look up slowly. “Come in.”

Raven pokes her head in and then swings the door wide open. “Morning,” she says brightly. “I brought you some clothes.” She carries in a folded pile of fabric and a pair of new beige hi-top Converse. It’s identical to the outfit she wears – the same outfit as last night, just clean. She holds the pile out to me.

I take them and examine the sweatshirt. “Are we in prison?”

“No?” She gives me a funny look. “We’re here to train. We’re not going to wear fancy clothes to work out in.”

“I see.” 

“Get dressed and meet us downstairs for breakfast.”

After she leaves, I lock the door and quickly drop the robe. I don’t want to put on the sweatshirt and look like a gray blob, but it’s cold in the mansion. I run a towel through my damp hair one last time and head out into the hall.

On the second landing, I find Erik. He’s clean shaven and his light hair is combed. He’s also dressed identically to me. I think we look completely stupid, but seeing as I’m in fresh clothes I shouldn’t really complain. Erik eyes me beadily before we descend the remaining flight in stoic silence. I guess our affability from yesterday didn’t roll over to today.

Erik and I walk down the hall that leads to the kitchen. Off to the side are great oak doors that open up to a dining hall fit for kings. Not quite fit for a handful of young mutants in gray sweat outfits and a woman I don’t recognize dressed in what I assume is her weekend relaxed suit.

I sit down next to Sean and the woman smiles at me. Without waiting for an introduction, I press into her mind, riding her aura, and find all the information I need in a few seconds. Moira MacTaggert. CIA agent. Human. She’s the one who sought out an expert on mutants after coming across a strange being herself, and found Charles at a pub in Oxford after his presentation on mutation. I gather lots of other flashes as well, of her and Charles on some large ship at night, of her and Charles and Erik lying in the dirt hidden by trees outside a large house, of Charles and Raven in a conference room. Wow, there’s lots of Charles there, too. Just Charles. His face, his eyes, his hair, his nose. She seems to focus on him a lot. Her aura doesn’t lie – she finds him attractive.

“I’m Moira MacTaggert,” the woman says pleasantly, extending her arm over a bowl of scrambled eggs.

“Leah,” I say. “Nice to meet you. Where’s Charles?”

“Still in bed,” Erik says from my left. “He likes to sleep in. Pass the sausages, please.” I hand him the plate and he spears one with his fork and observes it shrewdly. “Are these cooked properly? I don’t exactly trust anything that was made without Charles’s supervision.”

“Everything’s fine,” Moira says. “I looked in on them. They did very well. I don’t understand what the big fuss was about last night.”

“You should have been there, then,” Erik says. “The kitchen was destroyed. It took two and a half hours to clean up.”

“And I bet you didn’t help at all,” Moira says to her toast.

Erik stares Moira down as he bites off a piece of sausage. “Naturally.”

“So, uh, what is it you all can do?” I ask as I dig in to my heaping plate of food. “I mean, what are your powers? Wait – I changed my mind. Don’t tell me.”

No one says a word as they exchange confused glances. In turn, I reach out and touch each of their minds and find that Erik controls metal. Raven is a shapeshifter. Alex generates powerful plasma blasts from his chest. Sean creates high-powered sonic waves with his voice. Super-strength Hank is hiding monkey feet in his shoes. Once I’ve got this knowledge I show them my ability by telling them what theirs is, and then explain about the aura thing. They’re all pleasantly surprised but don’t seem that enthusiastic about having another telepath in the house.

Reading their minds instead of their auras (which comes more naturally to me) intensifies my headache. I rub my temples in between bites. I’ve used more telepathy in the last two days than I have my entire life.

After breakfast, everyone disperses to “train”. I try to follow Erik because I really don’t know what I’m supposed to do, and Charles never came downstairs to eat, but Erik is quick to brush me off. So I roam the mansion for a little while until I look out of one of the windows on the second floor and see Sean by himself on the back lawn in front of a range of mirrors and glass panes. Curious, I go meet him.

By the time I get outside, two of the mirrors are shattered. The glass sits in a heap on the grass, the sun reflecting rainbow colors on the shards. Sean, with his arms casually crossed over his chest, seems to lazily turn about half an inch to the right and emit this high-pitched metallic screech that shatters another mirror and my eardrums.

My hands fly to my ears. “Ow!”

Sean turns around. “Whoa! Sorry, I didn’t see you there.”

“What are you doing?” I say loudly. My ears ring. I rub the sound back into them.

“Just practicing. Warn me next time or I could end up making your ears bleed.”

“Yeah, I got that,” I mumble. “What are you practicing?”

“Charles told me to focus aiming my supersonic waves while Hank works on something for me,” Sean explains. He produces a pair of orange noise-cancelling headphones, military grade, from behind him. “Here.”

“Thanks.” I put them on and the sound disappears.

“Watch this!” he screams, pointing to his eyes, and then to a stand with nine individual glass panes. He sends out three metallic screeches that now sound like dull beeps and three different panes across the frame shatter. He gives me a thumbs-up.

I lift one ear flap. “Neat!”

Sean smiles.

I get bored watching Sean smash glass and the headphones cut off the blood circulation to my ears after a while, so I wander off to look for something else to do. The mansion is so huge I could probably investigate each room and still not be done by the time President Kennedy makes his address on the situation of the Russian missiles in Cuba at the end of the week. And then there’s still the grounds to explore.

I find Moira in the kitchen with Hank, who pours himself a glass of water. “Hey, guys. Have you seen Charles?”

Hank shakes his head and Moira says, “I think he’s still upstairs.”

“Oh.” I get a glass from the cabinet and fill it with lemonade from the refrigerator. I wonder why Charles would bother going through all that effort to bring me – or Logan, or someone – here if he was just going to lock himself away the following day.

Moira sets a plate of sliced bread next to glass jars of mayonnaise and mustard and platters of cold cuts, lettuce, tomatoes and pickles. “There’s stuff for sandwiches if you’re hungry.”

“Thanks.” I make myself a quick sandwich and scarf it down. Even after a big breakfast I’m already hungry. I eye the food, considering making a second one, when I think about Charles up in his room and how it’s probably time for him to come down now. I go ahead and make the second sandwich and put it on a small plate. “I’m going to go see if Charles is okay.”

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” Hank says quickly.

“Why?” I ask.

“Well, he did this once before, the day after we arrived here.” Hank scrunches his eyebrows together and shoves his glasses farther up his nose. “Sean tried to wake him. We heard Charles yelling from all the way down here.”

“I’ll be okay. If Charles yells at me I’ll just knock him out.”

I venture back through hallways of doors and up three flights of stairs until I find the familiar corridor that leads to our rooms. This place is a maze. I knock on Charles’s door quietly and hear a faint grunt from within. Inside, it’s completely dark. Slowly, guided by the light from the hallway, I make my way over to the nearest window, being extra careful not to trip on the thousands of books stacked across the floor. Before I get to the curtains, Charles speaks, mutedly: “No, please, leave them closed.”

I squint through the darkness at the heap on the bed and wonder how he saw me. He couldn’t have read my mind. I didn’t feel him inside my head.

“Are you all right?” I ask. I stumble along to the bed. “I brought you some food.”

“Thank you.” He doesn’t reach for the plate, so I set it on the nightstand, on top of a book since there’s no space. Charles’s body, covered by blankets, shifts around and his head pops up. His hair is ruffled and sticking up all over the place. “Do you have the time?”

“Must be almost one,” I say. “I don’t have a watch.”

“Hmm.”

I feel like pulling a Charles-card and searching his mind for what’s wrong. This isn’t the man I met yesterday, who was so strong and sure of himself. He’s not drunk; I don’t smell any alcohol. So, what’s his deal?

“It’s very simple, really. My problem,” he says with slightly slurred words.

“How are you doing that?” I ask. “I don’t even feel you.”

“I have a trick or two,” he says, tapping his temple. Man, he sure looks drunk. No, more like weary. “See, you can control when you use your power. You can choose when you want to read someone’s mind. I can’t!” He laughs an almost maniacal laugh. “I hear them. All the time. Thousands of them, all at once, talking, shouting, whispering, crying, laughing. Some days I’m better at tuning them out than others.” He grips his hair and pulls at it. I reach out and stop him before he rips it out in tufts. “And using Cerebro? It magnified it! It was better and worse at the same time. I could single people out and for once, I could just hear _my_ thoughts more clearly, and someone else’s in the background.” He grows quiet, and even in the darkness his blue eyes shine with sadness. “I could hear you all, downstairs. I felt your dreams last night.” Charles reaches out with a shaky hand to touch my cheek lightly. “I felt what you felt. Everything you’ve endured throughout your life. All of your suffering. You shouldn’t have had to live like that.”

My stomach clenches into a tight knot at the reminder that Charles knows everything about me, just as I knew everything about Logan. Now I see why it bothered him. Then, a wave of guilt washes over me as I consider what that means for Charles. And to think I thought of him as a posh, stuck-up know-it-all? He’s fighting a constant – possibly losing – battle with all the voices in his head. Voices that I never have to deal with unless I choose to. Feeling everyone’s emotions became second nature. If my aura was calm, I usually attracted the same calmness in others, and vice versa with anger. The most troubling thing I endure is headaches. I feel spoiled.

“I’m in the process of forgetting it,” I say quietly, hoping he takes the hint to not bring up my past anymore.

Charles closes his eyes, as if that simple action will make all of his problems go away. If only it were that simple. At this point, I’m pretty sure I’m one of the only people, if not _the_ only person, who could really understand what he goes through. That’s why he’s opening up. That, or he really is drunk.

“I’m not drunk,” he says.

“All right, that’s it,” I say, annoyed, and I shield my mind from him.

“Ah, one less,” he says with a sigh of liberation.

When I invented, for lack of better word, the walls in my mind yesterday, I only kept them up long enough to cut the connection with Charles. Now I attempt to keep it up for an extended length of time, I find that I have to spend a better part of my concentration making sure they remain. With the walls up, however, I also notice something new: the auras are gone! Did I have the power to shield myself off from the world, to be rid of the thing that makes me a _mutant_?

I think meeting Charles in the bar was the best thing that could have happened to me. But it’s not about me right now.

“Will you eat something?” I ask Charles.

“In a little bit.” He falls back against the pillows and lies there pitifully. If only there was a way to give him some peace.

What if there was? If I can shield my mind from him, maybe he can shield his mind from everyone else. I question him about it.

“I’ve tried, believe me,” he says wearily. “There are so many things I’ve discovered that I _can_ do, except the one thing I truly want – to create silence in my head.”

What I’ve gathered since I met him is that he can read minds, search their memories from now until the day they were born, and manipulate people’s actions. So much more than I’ve ever been able to do. I can just _feel_ them. How lame is that?

But this shield…when I choose to read someone’s thoughts, it feels like I’m sort of _projecting_ my mind. I’m not inviting their voices into my head, I’m actively going into theirs. Could I do that with the shield? Share that with Charles? I have no idea how that would work, but what the hell. Apparently, mutants have a wide variety of abilities, so why can’t I have this one?

All my life I never had reason to expand or test my powers. I really only used it when I was playing cards. Otherwise, it was always about hiding, keeping secret, making sure no one touched my skin or found out about the real me. Then, in the span of a few weeks, I found the first person I was able to touch without injuring _and_ discovered there was an entire species of people like me. To be perfectly honest, absolutely everything seems possible right now.

“Hold still, okay?” I tell Charles. I shift closer to him, reach out and place my palms on either side of his head. I really have no idea what I’m doing, so I just relax and let go. Focus on the shield, and on Charles’s extremely busy mind. I close my eyes and try to sort of push my mind forward.

At first, nothing happens. It feels like I just press through rubber, pushing outward against the resistance of my shield. Instead of attempting to give the shield to Charles, I try to invite him inside mine instead. The problem with that is, Charles isn’t the only one in his head. I have to isolate him. I picture steel doors and allow the tiniest of cracks between them, then send out thoughts through the break, telling Charles to find me.

He does. Once he’s there I shut the doors and erase the metaphor so it’s just my mind and his, like we’re inside an eggshell. I feel nothing in my head. Nothing beyond my palms. My thoughts are gone, his thoughts are gone. There’s two tiny pinpricks of what I believe is our collective consciousness, and that’s it. Charles lets out a quick cry of relief that frightens me because I think I’ve hurt him somehow, and I break contact and everything resumes.

“No!” he shouts, and reaches out for my hands. “No, no, please. Do that again. It was so…quiet.”

“Okay, okay. Hold on. And move over, will you? You’ve got this whole bed and you sleep on the very edge.”

Charles scoots to the center of the bed and slinks down far into the covers. I prop a pillow against the headboard and lean back. He rests his head on my lap, I place my palms back on his temples and try to resume that calm serenity I reached just moments ago.

It doesn’t take quite as long this time, though I still have to go through the whole process. When his world has gone silent again, Charles’s body goes limp. That’s when I understand why he stays in a dark room. Why he surrounds himself with books. In the dark, he thinks he can drown out the voices. With the books, he thinks if he concentrates on reading he won’t focus on everything else in his head. Suddenly, the man I thought grew up with everything doesn’t really seem like he’s had it all.

Subconsciously, my fingers rub small, soft circles in his hair. I think this relaxes him more. The longer we stay like this, the more fatigued I become. It takes a lot of energy from me, mentally, but strangely my headache is gone. I lean my head back and manage to fall into a light doze without breaking our shield.

I think we share a dream. If it is a dream. We are asleep, I can tell that much, and in this dream, everything is white. The endless empty room, our clothes, our auras. And we just stare at each other, calmly, with a small smile. It must be the shield at work. What I know is not the shield, though, is how I enjoy smiling at him, and seeing him just as happy….

When I open my eyes sometime later, I find that the drapes are pulled open, letting in the warm early evening glow. I stretch my arms and take a deep breath in through my nose. Instead of a smooth exhale, I gasp and the shield vanishes. I nudge Charles awake.

Standing at the foot of the bed, basked in that warm early evening glow, is Erik, Hank, Raven, Moira, Alex and Sean. All stare with equally perplexed faces.

Charles sounds like his old self as he says quickly, “Good evening, everyone,” and sits straight up in bed. I futilely shift myself away from him half an inch.

“Did you have a good nap while the rest of us were hard at work?” Raven asks. Her face is calm but her tone has a bit of a bite to it.

Charles looks at each of them in turn. “I’m sorry,” he says honestly. “Leah offered me a chance to find some peace in my head. I, well, I couldn’t resist.” His lips pull into a sly, sad grin.

“I guess that doesn’t seem so weird,” Sean says in his long drawl. Slowly, the others agree. Raven, however, just crosses her arms over her chest.

“We’ve almost lost _another_ day of training,” she complains.

“I’m sure it wasn’t a complete loss,” Charles says, distractedly, while his eyes find the sandwich I brought up earlier. He reaches out behind me to grab it. I slide out of the bed at that moment, feeling really uncomfortably self-conscious. “What did you all do today?” he asks with his mouth full, very unlike his usual prim-and-proper cadence.

“Actually, I made some headway on both Alex and Sean’s suits,” Hank says, and there’s a complaint of, “It’s Banshee, dude,” from Sean, which Hank ignores. “We could try them out.”

Charles takes another bite and looks out of the window as he chews. “It’s probably too late to do anything with Sean. Alex, if you’re up for it, we could go downstairs and give the plasma beams another go.”

“Sure,” Alex says.

“All right, it’s settled. You all just have to get out of my room first and let me have a shower.” Charles eyes his company until they turn to leave. I make to follow them, but Charles calls me back. “I just wanted to thank you.”

I shrug. “Any time.” My mind then strays to the memory of last night, when I relished the scent of his pajamas for a brief moment.

Charles clears his throat in an awkward way, and when we make eye contact, his cheeks have a slight flush. Damn. How easily I forgot that he can _read minds_.

“I’m going to leave now,” I say uselessly.

“Wait–” Charles runs his hand through his hair. “Er, wait.”

“I’m waiting.”

“How did you know you could share your shield?” he asks.

“I didn’t know. Until yesterday, I didn’t really know I could _shield_ my mind.”

Charles looks down at his sandwich and picks at the crust. “So, you just…thought you could do it, and you did?”

“Basically.”

With an exasperated huff, Charles looks from his sandwich to the window. “Have you always developed your powers in this way?”

“What are you talking about?” I pull my brows together in an annoyed fashion. “I wasn’t developing anything. I figured it was something I could try. I mean, we’re mutants, aren’t we? Crazy genetic anomalies. Mutants are able to do all sorts of weird things.”

“No,” Charles says with an incredulous chuckle. “No, no, no. In every case I’ve studied, mutants are born with their abilities, and they develop what they were born with over time. They don’t just spontaneously gain new powers.”

“But it’s not really a new power.” I find myself getting angry. “I do all sorts of…I don’t know, _brain_ stuff, just like you. I can read minds, feel auras. Doesn’t it make sense that I can shield my mind, too?”

“Maybe, but…” Charles shrugs defeatedly. “Don’t you also absorb others’ energy?”

I fold my arms over my chest. “Your point?”

“Consider this,” Charles says as he shifts around in the bed. “It’s logical that a mutant with telepathic powers would also have a degree of telekinesis to accompany it, or vice versa.” He pauses for my agreement. I continue to stare at him with my arms across my chest. He resumes.

“What you have is something entirely different. You have two completely distinctive powers, one of which you’re constantly, well, upgrading, for lack of a better term.”

“Maybe I was a twin, and in the womb I absorbed my mutant sibling and their power,” I suggest sarcastically. My sarcasm, however, goes right over Charles’s head.

“It’s probable. I understand you were raised in an orphanage, but if you were to let me search your mind, maybe I could find the memories of when you were a small child–”

“Ugh, Charles, just stop!” I yell. “I’m not some mutant from your college days that you can study and experiment on!”

“No, of course not–”

“You make it sound as if I’m some sort of freak, which is an incredible accomplishment because that means I’m considered a freak among _mutants_ , which are already freaks of nature to begin with!”

After a long moment, Charles says, “I’m sorry. It wasn’t my intention to make you feel that way. You are not a freak, Leah. You’re just…well, maybe you’re just a new breed of mutant.”

“I suppose that’s a little better.”

Charles relaxes a bit, and I realize I must have sounded like an irritable child. Almost as quickly as I think I’d love to know what’s going on in his head, my mind pushes itself forward, stretching out tendrils to reach the most easily accessible of his thoughts.

To my surprise, I see Erik. I catch the tail end of a thought, something about how Charles hadn’t seen as much fire and potential in someone since Erik and some submarine, before he whisks his thoughts away and makes me retreat from his head.

I rub my temples. “I forget how strong you are.”

“I’ve had years of practice. Normally, I’d forgive your snooping. Seeing as you have the ability to control when you read minds, I’d thank you not to invade my privacy.”

“Well, same to you!” I throw a shield of iron walls around my mind and vow never to take them down as I storm out of Charles’s bedroom. Again, I devote a certain percentage of my brain power to keep those iron walls up, and already I feel my energy draining.

Despite that, I stomp angrily down the hall and descend three flights of stairs, pounding each step with unnecessary force, so that by the time I’ve reached the foyer my ankles are sore and I’m no less pissed off at Charles. Seeing Hank and Alex pause their conversation as I approach does nothing to improve my mood, yet I put on a happy face.

“Hey, guys,” I say.

“Hi,” Hank says.

“Mind if I, uh, tag along to wherever you’re going?” I’m sort of curious to see how Alex’s powers work after I got a glimpse of these red circular beams emanating from his body and slicing through a metal statue during breakfast. And anything to get my mind off Charles.

“Guess not,” Alex says with a shrug.

“I was going to go to my lab,” Hank says. “Show Alex the new addition to the suit.”

We weave our way through the mansion to a back wing on the first floor, where behind double doors lies a makeshift lab set up in an old reading room. An impossible amount of equipment litters fold-up tables, and what doesn’t fit on the tables sits right on the floor.

“Whoa,” I say. “Been busy?”

“Sort of,” Hank says. “I’ve been designing our suits – Alex’s and Sean’s takes some work – as well as working with Raven’s DNA to try to find a cure for the physical aspects of our mutations.”

I want to ask what’s in Raven’s DNA and why he wants to change their physical appearance. “You don’t seem that abnormal, Hank,” I tell him. “You look like a regular guy.”

“Come on, those feet are a huge turn-off,” Alex says with a laugh as he plops himself down on a stool.

Hank glares at him. “Thanks, man. I’m doing it for Raven, too. And any other mutant with physical abnormalities.”

“What’s wrong with Raven?” I ask. “She looks pretty normal to me, too.”

Hank raises an eyebrow. “Haven’t you seen her in her natural blue form?” At my puzzled look, he says, “Apparently not…” and wanders off to the back of the lab. “Come here, Alex. Check this out.”

I shuffle through Hank’s lab equipment, careful not to touch anything with liquids, and half-listen to Hank describe his reasoning behind the new design of Alex’s suit. Alex seems to listen just about as much as I am. I chance a glance at them and see Hank hold up a black vest that zips up the side, and a large, circular metal plate attached to the chest area.

On my fourth slow round of the lab, I come across a small stack of papers ridden with sketches and designs and swatches of yellow and blue fabric. I run my fingers along the material. Stretchy, supple fiber. The designs are suits, like Hank said, but I really didn’t put a mental picture to the name. Now, I see what he has been planning. The sleeves, intertwined colors, boots…Hank is designing…superhero costumes?

Just then, Charles appears in the lab, with his hair combed back, glistening dark and wet, wearing a simple blue ensemble. A dark blue tweed jacket, dark pants, brown loafers, and a light blue button-up shirt. When he reaches up to adjust a strand of hair that is not out of place, his sleeve pulls back to reveal a large silver watch.

Sure, he looks great, but I’m mad that he’s not wearing the stupid gray getup that the rest of us wear. As it is, Alex has a scalpel in hand to hack off the stiches on the sleeves of his sweatshirt. In a swift motion, he detaches the sleeves altogether and puts it on. Oh, well now he looks fantastic and cool. I quickly take my sweatshirt off and tie it around my waist, so as not to look so conforming as well.

“All right everyone, let’s head down,” Charles says.

“Down?” I repeat. How much more ‘down’ can there be on the first floor?

“Yes, down. My stepfather had an underground bunker built, strong enough to withstand a nuclear bomb. He took the possibility of nuclear war quite seriously. We’ve been using the bunker as a practice range of sorts.”

“Bet your stepfather didn’t think it’d actually be used,” I say.

Charles raises an eyebrow cynically before leading us down the hall and out onto the lawn, where a back house waits a few yards away. Through here is a passage that leads down to large, heavy leaded doors that look like they belong in a naval ship.

“What happened to him?” I find myself asking Charles unwittingly. “Your stepfather.”

“He died,” Charles says simply.

“What about your parents?” I continue, despite myself.

Charles looks at me curiously, as if he can’t understand how only a half-hour ago I was yelling at him in his bedroom, and now I’m suddenly interested in his life. Don’t worry, Charles, I don’t understand it either. “They passed as well.”

“Oh.” Must be tough for him, to have all his parental figures dead. I wouldn’t know what it’s like to lose someone. Apparently, my mom died giving birth to me and my dad was killed when I was two. I was too young to remember them.

After a polite pause to see if I’m finished with my interrogation, Charles heaves open the doors to reveal a long empty bunker carved into the ground and lined with the same material as the doors. Portal lights flicker on at waist-height along the walls, illuminating about a half-mile tunnel. I assume in the bunker’s hay day it was a glorious thing, but now it looks like someone ran giant metal blades through it.

“Funny.” Alex materializes next to me so quickly and quietly it makes me jump. “Charles assured me this place could handle my powers because it was built for nuclear warfare. I shredded it on the first try. It’s no wonder they call me Havok.”

He disappears back through the doors and emerges with a large white mannequin, detailed so perfectly to the form of a female that even her nipples were designed. Hank and Charles come in next, each with a mannequin of their own. I watch as the three of them trek the half-mile to the far end of the tunnel and situate the mannequins in a row like targets before making their way back.

Hank holds up the black vest. “Suit up.” He helps Alex into it and drags the zipper up the side, tucking it up in his armpit. It fits snugly over his broad chest.

“Sexy!” Alex jests with an ungraceful eye roll.

“Well, like I said earlier, this is just the prototype,” Hank says. “The real one will look considerably better. It will be a whole suit. You can see these sensors better here–” Hank gestures to four swirly pads “–they measure your energy output. This panel focuses it and the excess is absorbed.”

Charles plants himself in front of Alex, and then nods to the mannequin targets. “Try hitting the one in the middle. _Just_ the one in the middle, mind. Good luck.” Charles touches my elbow and we head for the door.

“Got that fire extinguisher?” Alex calls over his shoulder.

Charles chuckles softly. “I had them rush over a large order.”

Alex smiles and flexes his muscles, stretches his neck, spreads his feet apart. Readying himself. I don’t notice that Charles and Hank have left the bunker.

“Coming, Leah?” Charles calls.

“We’re not going to watch?”

“You want to be in here when I let loose?” Alex asks.

“Well, we’d be behind you. Your beam is being focused that way.” I point at the mannequins. “Why not?”

Alex shakes his head. “Just close the door behind you.”

I make a face and leave the bunker. Charles closes the door tight and yells, “Whenever you’re ready!” Quickly, before I have a chance to second-guess myself or argue if it’s okay or not, I touch two fingers to my temple, let down my shield, and cast my senses out into the bunker. It comes in slices, and I realize I only see what goes through the concrete and dirt, not the iron. I frown, and angrily push through the metal with my mind. It gives way slightly and I release my senses in astonishment.

Charles and I make eye contact. Without my shield up, I’m pretty sure he knows what I just did. I feel his aura and get waves of curiosity rather than irritation, then I quickly rebuild my shield.

The green light above the door turns red and a buzzer goes off. Charles opens the door and we go in. The bunker walls aren’t on fire, I’ll give Alex that much. But at the very end of the tunnel, the two outer mannequins stand flaming, dropping licks of fire on the floor, and the middle one remains pristine white.

Alex turns to glare at me as he gets up off the floor. He must have fallen on his back from the force of his plasma beams. “What did you do?”

“What do you mean?” I ask.

“I felt you in here,” he says, almost accusingly.

“So?” All eyes are on me. I grit my teeth. I can’t see why it’s a big deal. Alex is probably just looking for someone else to blame for his failure. Does no one understand how exciting this is for me? I’ve spent my entire life alone, thinking I was a freak, and now I’m living in a house full of people that share my rare qualities. It shouldn’t bother them when I use my powers if they know they exist.

I swallow my pride with some difficulty and say, “I’m sorry. I just wanted to see how your power worked.”

The heavy bunker doors slam shut. Charles locked us in. “I think she was right earlier, Alex. Thanks to Hank’s vest, you focused your energy towards the end of the bunker this time. I don’t think you’ll hit us if we stay here. Go on. Hit the middle target.”

Alex’s eyes widen in disbelief, but after a moment, he slowly turns to face the remaining mannequin. “Your funeral,” he mutters as he takes his ready stance, arms out with hands balled into fists, and suddenly an extreme heat blows back into my face. The entire bunker is lit with an amazing red-white light as a hard plasma beam bursts from Alex’s chest and obliterates the remaining mannequin, leaving a standing block of flames.

Charles slowly claps. “Well done, Alex. I think that’s enough for today. Let’s go back up.” He gestures Hank and Alex outside. “I’ll just put out the fires first.” Alex unzips the vest and hands it back to Hank. I make to follow them, but Charles holds me back, again. “We need to talk.”

“Here?” I say, fighting the urge to roll my eyes. I sort of expected this.

He grabs a fire extinguisher from just outside the bunker doors. “Yes.” He heads for the smoldering mannequins. “I felt what you did. With the metal walls.”

I follow him slowly. “I only did it for a second. It was weird, so I stopped.”

“Have you ever done that before?”

“With metal? No.”

“Have you ever moved objects before?”

“ _No_.” I’m getting tired of the third degree. It’s like our conversation from an hour ago. As much as it pains me to not lash out with harsh words and biting insults, I try to remember what I’m here for and what Charles is trying to accomplish. Which is getting to know his mutants and training them to be better. I sigh. “I’ve never really tried to use my powers before now, except to see if someone was a mutant or win at cards.”

He laughs a bit, amused, then blows white foam on the mannequins until the flames are gone. He sets the fire extinguisher on the floor and points to it. “Move that.”

I furrow my brows. “What?”

“Move that,” he says again. “Move the metal.”

I sigh and concentrate on the fire extinguisher. I isolate the metal, with my hand outstretched like a conduit. I feel its shell, the metal bar around the shell connecting the pipe. I feel its molecules, how they are almost alive, and I will them to move. My body emits a sort of energy wave, almost magnetic, that makes my brain and fingertips vibrate with power. And slowly, the fire extinguisher rises a few feet off the ground. It was raised mere seconds before my bewilderment broke my concentration. The extinguisher falls with an ungraceful clatter that echoes in the bunker.

Charles doesn’t say anything. After a long moment of silence, he turns to the charred mess of mannequin and breaks off what remains of an arm. “This is made of a type of plaster.” He sets it down next to the fire extinguisher. “Now, move that.”

Unlike the metal, the arm feels sort of dead. Ironically, since Alex just burned it to hell. There’s nothing for me to manipulate, which makes me wonder why the element of metal felt alive. I improvise this time. I reach out with my senses, surround the charred arm in the tendrils of my mind, allowing it to lift from the ground, and send it over to Charles. He takes it from midair.

“Describe the two incidents,” he instructs me gently.

I bite my lip as I think. “Well, they were different. I sort of felt like the fire extinguisher was a part of me, like the metal was a living being, and it was kind of just like asking it to move and it did. The mannequin needed me to actually move it.”

Charles nods slowly. He tucks one hand under his chin while I imagine his brain at work, thinking. Always thinking. “That’s what I was afraid of.” He walks over to me with wary steps. “Listen to me. I need you to be _very_ careful with whom you touch from now on.”

“I’m always careful,” I say defensively.

He shakes his head. “With _mutants_. What you just did there, with the fire extinguisher, was influencing metal. That is Erik’s power. Moving the arm was just an extension of your telekinetic energy, part of telepathy, which I mentioned was possible.”

I stumble back from him, understanding what he says and trying not to at the same time. “The shock,” I say. “The shock when I touched Erik yesterday.”

Charles nods solemnly. “Yes. I think when you touched Erik, you absorbed some of his power, as opposed to just absorbing his energy like you do with humans. And now you can control metal.”

“Is that why I can touch you?” I ask. “We’re both telepaths?”

“That could be an explanation.”

“But why could I touch Logan? I don’t have the same powers as he does.”

“I don’t know,” Charles says slowly. “It could be that his incredible regenerative abilities help stave off your touch.”

I scoff. “I can’t believe this.”

“You’ve avoided touching people all your life. This isn’t really any different,” Charles says reasonably.

“Humans are one thing. I know not to touch them. I can potentially kill them if I keep contact long enough. But what if there are other mutants out there besides you and Logan that I _can_ touch?” Does he not understand that I want some sort of physical relationship in my life? To be able to hug or kiss, or more, with someone who will most likely have to be a mutant?

I grab the fire extinguisher and head for the door. Being underground this long makes my skin crawl. Or maybe, just maybe, I miss my brief life with Logan. I didn’t have to worry about any of this when I was with him. But _he_ left _me._ So, screw him.

“I guess you’re right,” I continue when we’re above ground. It’s nearly dark. The evening light casts shadows on all the trees. The setting sun glistens beautifully on the walls of the mansion. “I could become this cesspool of powers and probably end up killing myself. But what would happen if I had prolonged contact with a mutant? Would I start to take their energy, too?” I choke out a pathetic laugh. “What if I had touched Hank? Would I grow monkey feet?”

“You can see why I was so concerned before. I really don’t know what could happen, or _why_ this is happening. That’s why, for now, you need to be careful,” Charles says quietly. “And please, don’t let anyone know about this.”

I frown. “Why?”

He lowers his voice even more, so I can barely hear him. I lean forward to catch his words. “You absorb the powers of whomever you touch. If you collect enough of them, you could potentially become the most dangerous mutant on the planet.”

My entire body seems to freeze. I hadn’t thought about it that way.

“Charles!” Raven bounds over the lawn toward us. “Hey, guys! We got pizza!”

“We’ll be right in!” Charles calls. He looks back at me with pleading eyes, and then we make our way inside.

Everyone gathers in a very classy lounge room complete with lush sofas and thick carpets and windows that go almost the height of the walls. There’s expensive reading tables and bookshelves and a fancy TV set turned to the news. And all this is expertly downgraded as it’s strewn with sweaty mutants and pizza boxes and beer.

“This is how you end a training day?” Charles scolds them. He aims his reprimand at Erik, who at the moment drains the last of a beer. I’m positive Charles thinks the alcohol was his idea.

“Come on, man, the world could be over next week,” Sean says casually. “Let’s have a little fun.”

“That’s really not the way you should look at things,” Charles says. He turns towards me and hangs his head back with a groan. “Oh, you’ve got to be joking.”

I smile guiltily behind the beer bottle pressed to my lips. “I’m with Sean on this one, Charles.”

After a moment of deliberation, Charles says, “Fine. But we’re still getting up early to train. So, don’t complain when you all have hangovers.”

“I’m pretty sure we can handle our alcohol,” Raven says. She laughs easily, but her smile fades as Charles snatches the beer from her hands.

“You don’t drink,” he orders.

Raven grabs her bottle back. “Gee, what happened to the guy that was chugging yard glasses at Oxford?”

Charles purses his lips together, looking like the prude he’s trying to not be right now. “Give me a beer.” Erik chuckles and hands him one.

We eat and drink and laugh, and start a game of charades. It’s all good fun until Moira arrives, just as we noticed she wasn’t there.

“Speak of the devil!” Erik says with a hearty laugh and a hiccup.

“Are we having a party?” Moira asks. Her face drops as she sees all the empty beer bottles. Apparently, we are not the mutants she was expecting. Especially after what happened at Division X.

“Come on, have a drink,” Charles says. His words slur a little.

Moira glances at the TV, which is turned to the news but has long been forgotten. “Have you even been paying attention to this?” She stalks across the room and turns up the volume. The news reporter’s voice blares through the tiny speakers, straining and staticy, but it cuts to a commercial for instant brew coffee a moment later.

“Russia is moving to retaliate against the U.S.’s actions very soon,” Moira says. “Their missiles are on their way to Cuba. President Kennedy is going to sign a formal proclamation setting up a blockade of all missiles bound for Cuba. We can only imagine how the Soviets will react. Shaw’s plan is working.” She locks eyes with Charles, and I wonder if they’re communicating silently. “We’ll need you in Cuba if this escalates.”

“A step along the road to unleashing a thermo-nuclear war,” Erik mutters, dropping his blithe façade.

“I think it’s time for bed, everyone,” Charles says dismissively. Everyone picks up trash and the mess is essentially shifted from this room to the kitchen. We all shuffle off to our respective areas of the house. Charles stays behind to talk with Moira, so I walk with Raven up the last flight of stairs. I miss a step a couple of times, and Raven laughs and says I must be drunk.

“Are you worried?” she asks me.

“No, I’ve been drunk before,” I say.

“I mean about the war.”

“Oh. Honestly, I don’t really know. I guess it hasn’t really sunk in yet.”

She nods. “It will soon enough. I think it’s getting to Charles. Slowly. He really wants to believe that humans and mutants can live together peacefully.” When I hiccup my response, she sighs. “My room is down this way. Did Charles give you a pair of his old pajamas last night?”

“Yeah.”

“Do you want your own pair?”

I hiccup slightly. “We’re about to go to war. I think pajamas are the least of my worries right now.”

Raven shrugs. “Charles asked me if I would share my stuff with you.”

“I mean, I guess. Thanks for the offer, but we have bigger things on our plates right now than clothes.”

“Come on.”

Raven grabs my sleeve and leads me to her room. It’s a very girl room. The bed and furniture are of a similar quality to mine, but it has a cozy, lived-in feel. The bedding has elegant flowers on it, and the drapes are in the same pastel colors. A few movie posters – _Rebel Without a Cause, All About Eve, A Streetcar Named Desire, Giant, An American In Paris_ – are tacked to the walls. While Charles has endless books, she has music. Countless records and a nice record player. And then, she opens an extremely large closet filled to the brim with clothes of a quality I could only dream of.

“Help yourself. I don’t mind. I have another closet in the next room full of stuff I don’t even wear anymore.”

“You mean you wear all this?” I say, acknowledging the bursting closet.

“Of course.” She laughs. “The drawers here are all lounge clothes. Take your pick.”

“I can look through the other room. I’ll take the stuff you don’t wear.”

“No, it’s fine. This is the stuff that’s in style.”

“Honestly, it doesn’t really matter to me. I prefer pants and boots. And my leather jacket. It draws a lot of stares but I don’t care. Boys wear it, and it’s comfortable. I don’t like dresses, but I’ll wear them when I have to.”

Raven laughs and walks over to the dresser. “Here. These pajamas are new. Charles gave them to me last Christmas but I never wear them.” She digs out a silky red tank top and matching silk shorts with pink lace. They’re modest, but still have a sort of sexy appeal to them. I hold my hands up to refuse.

“What’s wrong?” she asks.

“I can’t wear that.” I remind her about Charles’s situation. About how he might need me at night, and I wouldn’t want to be stuck wearing that if he does. I’d be better off in his t-shirt and pants. And she just laughs at me. My cheeks flush.

“Look, I don’t mean to sound rude, but Charles likes women that he can use once and never see again. He likes the thrill of the chase and then lets them loose when he’s done. Trust me, I’ve seen it before.” She folds the tank top and shorts messily and puts them on top of the dresser, but the silk is so smooth they just unfold anyway. “Even if you wore this every night, once he had you, I doubt he’d try again. Even if he enjoyed it. If you’re living here he won’t try anything, either. He couldn’t face you the following days.”

For some reason, this upsets me. I sense Raven’s truthfulness, that she’s not saying these things to hurt me, but still, they do. “Fine, I’ll take them. And don’t be so quick to assume I wouldn’t get rid of Charles after one night, either.”

She smirks. “Let’s go find you some more clothes to wear.”

“What’s the point?” I grumble. “Charles has us wearing these god-awful prison sweat outfits…”

We spend maybe a half hour browsing through her second closet, and I have to admit, it gets kind of fun. Raven is taller than I am so any pants I choose will have to be rolled up at the bottom. When a good-sized pile of clothing covers the spare bed, we promise to move it to my room tomorrow.

“You know, this is all is going to mean nothing if the war isn’t stopped,” I say quietly, and Raven finally lets her fear show. That’s when I remember what Hank said earlier about her true form. I’ve never seen it. “You’re blue?”

“Sorry. Usually I’m better at hiding my feelings.”

“No. Hank said this isn’t how you usually look. That you’re really blue,” I say. Raven’s face sort of lights up when I mention Hank’s name.

“What else did he say?” she asks.

“Not much. Just that he’s working on a cure for the physical appearances of mutants with your DNA.”

Raven resumes a more stoic expression. “Oh.”

“You don’t want that?” I ask.

“I thought I did. I grew up with Charles, who never had to hide his powers. In fact, he flaunted it and no one ever knew. I always had to disguise myself.” She folds her arms protectively over her chest. “Hank told me there was a way that I wouldn’t have to hide anymore. It seemed so great, but…”

Right before my eyes, Raven’s pale skin fans out in feathery blue layers, revealing short, slick back red-orange hair, bright yellow eyes, and blue scaly skin. In her true form she doesn’t wear clothes. The new skin is thick, and you can see all the lines of her body, but it doesn’t look indecent at all. I have never seen anything so extraordinary.

“This is who I really am,” she says.

“Don’t change,” I say hastily while I vehemently shake my head. “If he makes a serum don’t take it. Stay like this.” Despite this tiny voice (which sort of sounds like Charles) that tells me to stop, I reach out and touch her cheek. Her skin is still smooth. The scales are just accents. It’s actually quite beautiful. After a delayed moment, a tiny pinprick of electricity shocks the tip of my finger and her cheek, but she doesn’t flinch. She just looks at me funny. I giggle. “Sorry, static electricity. Can you show me how it works? The shapeshifting?”

She grins and suddenly, after another fantastic blue feathery array, I stand there grinning at me. Thankfully I’m clothed.

“Amazing!” I exclaim.

“I know,” she says in my voice, and retreats back to the blonde-haired, brown-eyed Raven. “Well, this has been fun, but I’m all sweaty and icky from running with Erik today so I need a shower. And you smell like singed hair.”

I laugh. “All right, well, thanks for the clothes. And showing me…that.”

“Any time,” she says.

We cross the hall and she goes to her room. After she shuts her door, I hear a low whistle from behind. I turn and see Charles walking towards me, his hands casually tucked in his pockets.

“What were you two up to?” he asks.

“You mean you don’t know?” I ask with faux astonishment.

“You have your shield up, and I made a promise to Raven not to read her mind many years ago,” he explains. He extends his elbow. I take his arm as we walk down the hall.

“Raven gave me some of her clothes,” I say. “Oh, that reminds me, I left those pajamas in the room.”

“Didn’t you like the ones I gave you?”

“Well, sure. But hers are girly and red.”

He scowls. “Not the ones I gave her last Christmas.”

“Guilty."

“Last time I buy her anything.”

“I don’t think those were quite appropriate for a sister, anyway,” I tell him. We’ve reached our bedrooms. We stop and I release his arm.

“You’re right. I bought them for someone else, and ended up not needing them.” When he leans in, I can smell beer on his breath. “I bet they’d look great on you.”

Raven’s words flash through my mind, and what Charles just said suddenly doesn’t sit well with me. Funny, if Logan had made that comment, we’d probably be in bed already. But we had a casual fling. I don’t know why, but even though Charles has the same history, I don’t feel the urge to go after him that way. So instead, I put my hands on his shoulders, spin him around, and steer him inside his room and give him a little shove towards his bed. He giggles slightly.

“Good night, Charles,” I say, and then he pouts.

“What about my mind shield?” he asks.

“I need a shower. Besides, you’re pretty buzzed. I’m sure you’ll be all right if you relax.” Before he can stop me, I escape and snap his door shut. Then I run for the bathroom and start a hot bath. I don’t really need a wash, but it was the only excuse I could think of so I might as well follow through with it.

When I emerge from the tub a half-hour later and don the robe, I realize I have no clean underwear. I roll my eyes. I did basically nothing today and I couldn’t bother to do laundry. But, Raven gave me a bunch of her clothes. With the amount of things she owns, I’d probably never have to do laundry again.

Out in the bedroom I find Charles asleep on my bed and frown. I bet he came over here to plead his case for peace of mind and fell asleep, ironically. He isn’t even under the covers. Thankfully he has some weird need to sleep at the very edge of the bed, and the mattress is big enough that if I stuff some of the many pillows between us, I’ll still have plenty of room on the other side.

After I get dressed in the bathroom, I fashion the wall of pillows, take the decorative afghan from the chaise and lay it over Charles, then crawl into bed. It takes a little longer for me to relax because I’m so aware of Charles sleeping on the other side of the pillows. My emotions are confusing me. Charles’ scent on the pajamas oddly sent chills of pleasure through my body. I definitely found him attractive since the first time I laid eyes on him, even more so than Erik. But then there’s what Raven said, and then Charles’ comment that made me mad…

Oh, god. Oh, god _damn_. It’s jealousy I felt, not anger.

Well then. I’m fucked.


	3. Can't Go Off to War Without Learning to Play Chess

_October 23 rd, 1962_

_Westchester County, New York_

I bolt upright in the morning in distress. I _shocked_ Raven last night. I’m a shapeshifter now! I’m so scared there’s no room to be excited and try out the new power. Slowly, shakily, I get out of bed.

Charles isn’t in my room anymore. There’s a fresh pair of sweats and tank top on the dresser, next to my old hi-tops and new pair of socks. I should really do laundry some time. I wash my face and get dressed in the clean clothes. I fold up yesterday’s outfit and put it in the empty top drawer of the dresser. It’s not really dirty.

When I peek outside the drapes, I judge by the light of the sun that it’s still fairly early. This mansion has so much, but it oddly lacks clocks.

Today’s itinerary was supposed to start with testing the suit Hank designed for Sean, but apparently he made a miscalculation in the aerodynamics. As intrigued as we all are now, seeing the suit in action has been put on the back burner. Instead, Charles and Moira plan to continue to brainstorm ways to make Sean’s power into something useful. The three of them spend the morning in front of glass windows on the lawn, watching Sean break them from various distances, while Hank locks himself away in his lab.

I spend the better part of the morning in a tiny weight room with a view of the gardens, watching Raven as she lifts weights. After about fifteen minutes, I give up watching her and just sit back and read a book.

Not long after that, Erik appears and casually leans against the doorframe. I guess he’s taking the day off because he wears a dark short-sleeved collared shirt tucked into beige pants with a belt, instead of our get-up. Before Raven notices him, Erik lifts the barbell from her hands high in the air with a magnetic wave I sense. Raven gasps and turns her head. She props herself up on her elbows and stares at Erik.

Erik just smugly says, “If you’re using half your concentration to look normal, then you’re only half paying attention to whatever else you’re doing. Just pointing out something that could save your life.” He drops the barbell and, as Raven is forced into her blue form, she catches it effortlessly, as if it weighed no more than a feather. “You want society to accept you, but you can’t even accept yourself.” He throws me an odd look before he leaves the room.

Raven glances at me, and I shrug. Neither of us know what that was about. From where I sit across the room, I use my new Erik-power to bring the barbell stands upright for her, and she sets the weights on it with a completely mystified expression. I remember that Charles told me not to tell anyone about that, so I hastily mumble something about the telekinetic energy of telepaths and she accepts it.

I take to gazing out of the window as Raven begins a set of squats. Two gray masses at the periphery of the glass catch my eye. I press my face against it and make them out to be Charles and Hank. Might be fun to see what they’re up to. I leave Raven and go outside.

Charles is now dressed as one of us, down to the matching shoes, and I find that without his snazzy attire he looks so little next to Hank.

“Hello, Leah,” Hank greets me. He appears as a mellow guy, but now he seems sort of sad for some reason.

“Hey, Hank. Are you all right?”

Hank shrugs. Charles claps him comfortingly on the back. “He’s just struggling with coming to terms with who he is.

“Well, I heard you were a runner,” I tell Hank. “So was I, for a bit. In high school. I bet you can’t beat me.”

Hank’s face sort of brightens. “Let’s see what you’ve got. I’ll start you off easy. One lap around the mansion, on the gravel. Charles, will you stay at the finish line to judge?”

“I most certainly will not,” Charles says. “I’m not sitting out of a race.”

“Fine,” Hank says, and we all line up at a bush at the edge of the roundabout. “Runners ready…on your marks–”

The three of us crouch slightly, and my heart skips a beat with the exhilaration of the anticipation.

“–get set – _Go!_ ”

We take off. Running this fast in the gravel isn’t easy. There is no traction, no grip. My feet dig into the tiny rocks and I can’t find a spring. But it’s fun. We laugh as we run because at different times we are all in the lead. There’s no telling who will win, until we round the last corner. Hank falls back slightly; it’s just me and Charles now. After a quick glance and a smirk, we each put on a burst of speed and fly the last few yards to the finish line. And I beat him.

“Whoo!” I punch the air. “Oh, this feels great.” Seconds later, Hank jogs up behind us. “What happened? You were doing so well.”

“I don’t know,” he says.

“Round two?” Charles asks him.

Hank lifts one shoulder elusively and just stares off in the distance. I look at Charles with raised eyebrows. Hank seemed happy this morning. Should we have let him win? First Charles couldn’t tell that Hank was essentially an undercover mutant at the CIA, then I couldn’t tell he was so upset when I was practically born to read auras. Charles and I make brilliant telepaths. Then again, now that I mostly focus on keeping Charles out of my mind, I find myself using my power to keep things in, rather than sense out.

“Let’s just go for a jog, then,” Charles suggests.

There’s plenty of land and lots of places to explore on the grounds. I trail behind the boys and listen to their conversation. They are both academics and have plenty to talk about. They recite poems and quote famous authors, and quiz each other on different subjects. I enjoy listening to them. Maybe once this is all over, I’ll go to college. Assuming the world is still standing, that is. I loved to learn when I was younger. I miss it. I might have to once again adopt my pastime of poker playing in order to afford tuition, though.

I haven’t recognized much of what they say until Charles starts to recount something I actually read once before, a long time ago. My ears perk up as I catch the last of the paragraph.

“‘… _and in each of us, two natures are at war’_ ,” he finishes.

“Robert Louis Stevenson. _Jekyll and Hyde_ ,” Hank says. We come up a small hill and find ourselves back at the mansion. We slow to a walk.

“Top marks,” Charles says. “The story wasn’t about good and evil though, was it?”

“It was about man’s animal nature and his struggle to control it, to conform.”

“That’s the struggle that is holding you back, Hank.”

Hank shakes his head. “No. Jekyll was afraid of what he could be capable of.”

“And so are you,” Charles says, and there lies the mystery of what Charles knows about Hank and I don’t.

“I’m going to go inside. Alex busted one of the sensors yesterday. I need to see if I can find a stronger alloy to withstand the heat of his plasma beams.” And with that, Hank disappears inside the mansion.

Charles and I slowly turn toward each other. After a moment, he says again, “Round two?” I grin wide and take off. “Not fair!” he shouts, but even with my slight lead he ends up beating me.

After our race, we tie our sweatshirts around our waist and walk around the gardens to cool off. There’s a small pond up ahead surrounded by thin trees and colorful flowery plants. With shoes off and pants rolled up, we sit side by side at the edge with our feet in the crisp water.

“This feels nice,” I say thoughtfully. “I miss the water. Swimming. One of the foster homes I lived at had a pool.”

“I should put a pool here,” Charles muses. “There’s a lake a few miles away.”

“I’ll take the lake, but it’s not the same.”

“I agree.”

I feel him watching me, and my cheeks flush. “What?”

“What was this all about yesterday evening?” He pokes my head teasingly.

“My power?”

“No, silly, you touching your temple when you tried to see through the bunker.”

Embarrassment floods over me. “It’s just something I do sometimes when I try to read thoughts. It helps me concentrate.”

I watch his lips pull into a smile, sort of mesmerized by the action. “How interesting that you would copy me.”

“Copy you? I’ve been doing that for years!”

“As have I. And I’m _six_ years older than you. I’ll prove it. Will you lower your shield for a moment, please?”

Reluctantly, I oblige, but only slightly. I don’t want him getting into all my private memories, especially the thoughts I’ve started to think about him. Charles lowers his eyelids and bores his stunning blue eyes into mine, and when he raises his two fingers to his temple, I think he looks infinitely more attractive doing it than I must.

I see countless flashes of him in my mind, posed similarly to now: thin smirk, hand to his temple, eyes shining. The scenery changes. Slightly. Mostly in bars. Sometimes a classroom. Once, along a bridge. His clothes change, even he changes slightly. His hairstyle, the subtle age of his face. That’s when I realize I see him through the eyes of every woman he’s ever used telepathy to flirt with. I pick up on a pattern and shut him out.

“Seriously? You found girls with regular human traits and called them _mutations?”_ I scoff and correct myself. “ _Groovy_ mutations? Heterochromia? Normal. Mutated MCR-1 gene? Pathetic.” My stomach accumulates a large amount of acid when I realize that the MCR-1 gene, the ‘auburn’ hair, he tried to use on Moira. At least she was on business at the time and turned him down.

Charles looks ashamed, then comes back with a bit of fire. “Don’t pretend like you know all about mutations.”

“I know what’s in your head, _Professor_.”

“It’s not like I’m the only man to use ploys to get women,” Charles snaps.

I have no response to this, because of course, he’s not. “Forget it.”

We sit in silence. I wiggle my toes in the water, dig them into the soft mud.

Finally, I think of something to say. “I want to ask you something.”

“All right.”

“When you got into my head the other day, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I’d felt the sensation before. The sense of you.”

“That would have been when I used Cerebro,” Charles says. “You were one of the first minds that came to me – regardless of my normal radius of nearby people. As soon as I singled out the mutants, you were there like a giant beacon.”

I turn my head away from him, focus on the pond. The water, the mud, the little reeds that jut out near the edge. “You went through my memories that first time, didn’t you?”

Charles bites his lip. “It wasn’t on purpose, I promise you that. I can’t even recall the desire to do it. Once I was focused on you specifically, it just happened.”

“But why?”

“I’m not quite sure. Your mind is incredibly strong, so I’m definitely not surprised.”

I watch my toes make ripples in the waters’ surface. “If my mind is so strong, why didn’t you recruit me?”

“I did,” Charles says.

“Yeah, later. After you couldn’t have Logan.”

His face forms into a look of sympathy. “I wanted to find you, believe me. But when Hank looked up your coordinates and found that you were in Illinois, I had to make the decision to let you go. We didn’t have a lot of time. We just stayed along the East Coast.”

I nod. “Why did you go through my memories again when you saw me at the bar? Or did that just _happen_ , too?”

“Honestly, yes. Something caught my attention, something I thought I recognized. The moment I saw you, it was like…like we were tethered, and I was being pulled through as if I had a destination. It went straight to a particular night, many years ago, when you had an incredible burst of energy.”

My face drains of color in a tingling flush. “I don’t talk about that.”

“You should. It was linked to so much agony and rage.”

“I didn’t come here for a therapist, all right?” I snap. “It was the night I ran away. I almost killed one of the kids with that ‘burst of energy’. It’s not something I want to keep bringing up.”

“You need control yourself. I’ve seen what so much wrath can do to a person, and you may hit a point of no return.”

I search Charles’s face, try to deduce who he could be talking about. One person immediately comes to mind. “You mean Erik?”

He nods solemnly. “Just try to control yourself, keep a reign on your emotions. A mutant’s power is linked to extreme emotional trauma. I know you’ve had a horrible past, but hopefully here you can pave a happier future.”

“I thought I was only here to help you fight.”

“It’s a big house, plenty of space,” Charles says with a shrug. “You’re all welcome to come back any time.”

“Assuming we’re not dead,” I add glumly.

“You don’t have to be such a sarcastic pessimist all the time,” Charles tells me lightly. “I know you use that as a defense to keep people from getting close to you, but you don’t have to hide here.”

“Thank you, Doctor Xavier.”

“That’s _Professor_ Xavier to you.”

I smile, slightly, before my gaze turns back to the pond. A light breeze picks up and flutters through the browning leaves of the trees and makes the reeds sway in a dance. “Why couldn’t I see your past? Why did you only get to see mine?”

“I don’t know.” The way he says it makes it seem as if he’s not used to not knowing things. Which I understand, being a telepath. “Perhaps because our minds work differently. I am drawn to others’ thoughts, it’s second nature to have others inside my head.”

“But it didn’t happen with anyone else.”

He nods solemnly. “I’m afraid I won’t be able to give you a definite answer. But –” he leans into my shoulder, making me unwittingly smile “– if you feel the playing field isn’t very even, I could share my past with you. Full, unrestricted access.”

“That isn’t necessary,” I say. Although it might be useful later on. What would truly be nice is if he couldn’t feel me when I read his mind, that way I could do it at my leisure. “You know, for being you’re incredibly knowledgeable about mutants, you seem to be at a loss when it comes to me.”

Charles lets out this musical laugh that I never want to end. Last night we all drank and laughed, but this laugh is different. And I truly enjoy hearing it.

“That’s because you’re a mystery,” he says. The way he looks at me now, almost like a treat he’s so close to acquiring, makes my face hot. “Mutants are still a rare species. I’ve studied as much as I could, but there must be so much more to learn. For instance…” Charles reaches over and runs the back of his finger lightly along my upper arm, sending a chill down my spine. “There’s something I’ve been wondering. About how we seem to be able to make skin contact without you…well, you know.”

“Hmm? What’s that?” I’m torn between enjoying the sensation of Charles’s hand on my arm and remembering what Raven said last night, and Charles’s comment about ploys. Then I find it funny that Charles has to come up with a new tactic on me because he can’t get into my head. What a shame.

His voice comes out low and beguiling when he says, “Do you suppose your power is only blocked with the touch of fingers, or would it be blocked with the touch of lips as well?”

Clever. I still think about Raven saying, “ _He likes the thrill of the chase and then letting them loose when he’s done,”_ so I sort of scramble to come up with a witty response. But do I even want to kiss him? My better sense tells me that I shouldn’t, but that stir of pleasure I get from his scent, from his looks, from his voice and his laugh…I have no choice but to pathetically splutter out, “I don’t know.”

His musical laugh enchants me. “I could always find out for myself.” I get lost in his eyes, not unlike sapphires; bright, bold blue that stands out so clearly in the light from the sun as his face slowly gets closer to mine. I think, wow, they are so incredibly beautiful. And then my mind assaults me with wicked thoughts like how I smell like sweat and I didn’t brush my teeth after breakfast, but he is too close to me now and even as I make a small move to pull away, his hands reach out to trap my face and bring his lips to mine.

There is a spark. Not an electrocution like normal. Just a wild, freeing spark like I’ve never felt before. And why would I have? Here, now, with Charles, is the first kiss I’ve ever had that isn’t coupled with meaningless sex.

I literally, _literally_ just think that I really don’t want this kiss to end as someone calls out, “There you are!” and Charles quickly pulls away from me. We look around the garden and find Moira trekking down the path, panting slightly. “We were looking for you. Lunch is ready.”

“Thank you, Moira. We’ll be right there,” Charles says in a tiredly polite voice. Moira smiles and turns to go back the way she came. One look at Charles and we both know that she didn’t need to hike all the way down here to find us. And after he turns away from me, I think about how he stayed behind with Moira last night and my stomach twists into knots. Thrill of the chase. Doesn’t mean he has to chase one at a time. And the fact that it bothers me also scares me.

“Should get back,” I whisper, and I grab my shoes and take off.

“Leah, wait,” he calls, and I hear a loud splash and a grunt. I turn back to find Charles flat on his backside in the pond, completely soaked. “Ugh.”

I go and help him up, laughing uncontrollably. He rolls his eyes and stays silent as I continue to laugh and tease him about how ridiculous he looks when he’s usually so poised and proper.

While we all chow down on roast beef sandwiches and sliced green melon, I finally break and ask aloud something that’s been on my mind since this morning: “So, where does all this food come from?”

“I brought it,” Moira says. “On the CIA’s dime, of course. If this was going to be a temporary mutant training facility, it had to be well equipped.”

That explains the matching sweat outfits. I’ll bet the CIA or FBI training programs wear similar clothes. “Is that where all your lab equipment came from, Hank?” I ask.

“Yes and no. Most of that stuff is mine from my personal lab.”

“Speaking of mutant training facility, how is training going with everyone?” Moira asks, but she looks directly at Charles. I’m plagued with the strong need to _know_ what’s going on silently between them so suddenly that I open my mind without assessing the situation and sense waves of mild disgust and a little bit of betrayal from Moira, and slight regret from Charles. I think he catches me reading their auras because his head darts across the table to me, and unfortunately this doesn’t help Moira’s sensations. Oops.

There’s a chorus of “Great”, “Awesome” and “It’s all right” from the group. Hank tells us that he thinks he’s ready for Sean (“Banshee!”) to try his new wings. He doesn’t say much more. Apparently, he wants to save a bit of mystery for the actual demonstration.

When we’re done with lunch, Moira heads back to the CIA and the rest of us march up to the second floor, to a long room with four wide windows. There’s a well-stocked, extremely extravagant bar at the far end of the room, a dark-wood billiards table, deep red leather couches, a stuffed stag’s head, more bookshelves. Charles says that it was his stepfather’s man-cave, and the wide windows will work perfectly for what they’re about to attempt.

While Hank, Sean and Charles look over a yellow and blue striped mess of cloth and harnesses on a table, Alex and Raven start up a game of pool. I hang back with Erik, watching Hank and Charles strap the harnesses to Sean’s chest, around his shoulders, in between his legs, while Sean stands with his arms spread out.

“You’re sure this will work?” Sean asks Hank, a little bit fearfully, and it’s the first time I’ve heard anything other than a drone in his voice.

“Anything is possible. I based the design–”

“Hank, stop talking,” Charles orders simply. Hank shuts up quickly and tightens a strap to Sean’s right wrist. The cloth stretches out, and I finally see the wings. I’m really curious now.

After Charles makes one last adjustment to Sean’s left wrist strap, he leads Sean and Hank to an open window. Sean clambers onto the sill, his feet dangling outside. Nothing has been explained to us, so as Erik, Raven, Alex and I exchanged stunned glances, we’re probably all thinking the same thing: _What the hell are they doing?_ We rush to an adjacent window, open it up, and cram our heads out of it.

“Now remember, scream as hard as you can,” Charles instructs Sean. I see Sean’s head turn from side to side, and then down. Below him, there is only grass. Tall hedges start some feet out, but if Hank’s contraption doesn’t work, they won’t break Sean’s fall.

“You need sound waves to be supersonic,” Hank explains. “Catch them at the right angle and they should carry you.”

Sean looks reproachfully at Hank. “They _should_ carry me. That’s reassuring.” Then, he glances at Charles with a pleading look, as if he’s silently willing Charles to put an end to this madness.

“Good luck,” Charles says. “And don’t forget to scream.”

Sean raises his head to the sky, does a quick sign of the cross – more as witticism than actual faith, I think – and leaps out of the window. He does scream, all right, but it’s a pitiful “ _Ah!”_ about halfway down the side of the mansion, and he lands in a heap on the ground. Erik and Alex burst into laughter and Hank’s face contorts in a look of distressing horror before we all rush outside. Sean lays on the ground, now rolling and snickering in amusement. Charles sighs.

After our escapade with Sean’s wingsuit, Erik and Charles walk alone along the gravel path. I go with Raven to move the clothes she gave me to my closet, and as it fills up, a growing sense of belonging swells in my chest.

I wander over to one of the windows when Raven decides she’s going to color-coordinate the outfits, then sort them by occasion. That’s beyond my interest in clothes. I gaze out at the view of the wide mass of acres and that awful satellite that I have no idea its use. Something catches my eye. Down below, I see Charles point a gun at Erik’s head.

“Oh, my god!” I scream.

“What?” Raven runs to my side, and after searching the grounds for half a second, she gasps, finally seeing what I see. She bangs on the window, but we’re three floors up. They can’t hear us. “Charles! Erik!”

“No, wait. Look.” I take hold of her sleeve to stop her. We watch Charles struggle between raising and lowering the gun, and all the while Erik laughs.

“Is Erik taunting him?” Raven asks me.

“I don’t know.”

“You’re a telepath! Figure it out!”

“It would be wrong to eavesdrop.” Not to mention Charles is also a telepath and would know if I were snooping.

“It would be wrong _not_ to,” Raven counters. “Charles has a gun to his head. What if he kills Erik and we could have stopped him?”

“Erik controls metal. I’m sure they’re just training.” But my curiosity grows. I stare down at Erik and Charles and think, wonder. Should I listen?

I touch two fingers to my temple and concentrate on Erik’s mind, since Charles would most likely be able to feel me in his head. It takes some real brainpower at this distance, but eventually hear them talk. “Okay. I’ve got it.”

“What are they saying?”

“Here.” There’s nothing to lose now since I already touched her last night. I place my fingers on the side of Raven’s head and share my mind with her. She gasps, at the slight shock, at the vastness of my mind, I’m not sure. And we listen.

In the back of my mind I pay attention to Raven’s energy level. If she fades, falters, becomes weaker, I’ll terminate our connection immediately. A small trail of energy buzzes between my fingertips and her skin, but it comes at a much slower rate than when I touch humans. I wonder if mutant’s altered genes have anything to do with their resistance to me.

 _You’re always telling me I should push myself_ , Erik tells Charles. He has his hand on Charles’s hand, which is on the gun, which is against Erik’s forehead.

Charles struggles against Erik’s grasp and finally breaks free. He steps back and holds his arms out. “If you know you can deflect it, then you’re not _challenging_ yourself! Whatever happened to the man who was…who was trying to raise a submarine?” He holds the pistol out to Erik.

Raven feels my confusion. I hear her thoughts of, _I’ll tell you later._

_Well, I can’t!_ Erik says with a raised voice. He takes the gun, seems to relax as he stares at it in his hands. He stows it in the back of his pants. _Something that big, I…I need the situation, the anger._

“No, the anger is not enough.”

 _Well, it’s gotten the job done all this time,_ Erik snaps.

“It’s nearly gotten you _killed_ all this time.” Charles looks around the garden. His gaze stops somewhere in the empty distance. “Come here. Let’s try something a little more challenging.” They walk across the gravel, to the edge of the grass, before a stone railing. Miles back is the satellite. “You see that?” He points. “Try turning it to face us.”

Erik seems to roll his eyes before he takes a ready stance and reaches out. It must take a lot more energy to move the satellite than to move the barbell, and he needs his hand for it. From the third floor, I just barely see his entire body tense and shake with the effort. The satellite doesn’t move, and he drops his arm in defeat.

“You know, I believe that true focus lies somewhere between rage and serenity,” Charles says. “Would you mind if I…?” He raises his hand and wiggles his fingers near his temple. Erik shrugs. They are quiet as Charles explores Erik’s memories, and I quickly retreat from Erik’s mind.

Raven pressures me with her mind. She wants to know what they’re doing.

_No_ , I tell her. That’s between Erik and Charles. Plus, if I’m in Erik’s head when Charles enters, he will immediately know what we’re up to.

We watch in silence as Erik’s body goes limp and his knees wobble. Charles’s hand moves from his temple to his cheek. Is he wiping away a tear? I move back into Erik’s head.

_What did you just do to me?_ Erik asks weakly.

“I accessed the brightest corner of your memory system,” Charles says. His voice sounds a little choked up. “It’s a very beautiful memory, Erik. Thank you.”

_I didn’t know I still had that._ Erik’s voice is soft, pensive.

“There’s so much more to you than you know. Not just pain and anger. There’s good to you, I felt it. And when you can access all that, you’ll possess a power no one can match. Not even me. So, come on. Try again?”

Erik takes a deep breath and resumes his stance. After a long moment, and Raven and I silently cheering him on, Erik manages to turn the satellite about a third of the way towards us. He stops, gasping, and cries out in glee.

Charles just nods, as if he knew all along Erik would succeed. “Well done.”

They turn back to the mansion and I release myself from Erik’s mind and lower my hand from Raven’s temple.

“So, what’s up with the submarine?” I ask.

“Oh. That’s how Charles met Erik. Charles was on a mission with Moira about a month ago, right after Charles made this presentation to her bosses about the existence of mutants and got us kicked out of the building. Moira had a lead on Shaw. He had a yacht in Miami, so the CIA and the Coast Guard teamed up. I guess when they were getting close, Shaw’s yacht was attacked by the anchor it was attached to.”

“Erik,” I say.

Raven nods. “Yeah. Erik was in the water, I guess, working the anchor. And Shaw and his woman, Emma the Frost, escaped on a small submarine under the yacht. Erik was holding it back and it was dragging him along underwater. Charles jumped off the Coast Guard ship to try to save him from drowning.”

“Why didn’t Erik just bend a propeller on the submarine or something?” I say. “Stop it from being able to work altogether.”

“I don’t know,” Raven says, laughing. “Why don’t you ask him? I’m sure that would have worked a lot better.”

“I think I would just piss him off. What’s his deal with Shaw, anyway? I thought he was after him just because everyone else was.”

“Charles didn’t tell you? Erik knows Sebastian Shaw as Klaus Schmidt. From Auschwitz. Klaus Schmidt killed Erik’s mother and kept Erik like a lab rat, for his power.”

“Erik is a Holocaust survivor?” I say quietly. That explains the tattoo on his forearm. I probably should have figured it out by his name as well.

“Barely,” Raven says. We stand there, not speaking for a moment. She looks around the room uncomfortably. After a moment, she breaks the silence. “Will you help me?”

“With what?”

“Pick out an outfit.”

“For…?”

She blushes. We leave my room and walk down the hall to hers. “Hank’s in his lab. I was going to go visit him.”

“Do you like Hank, Raven?”

“Maybe…” She opens her closet and pulls clothes from it.

“Let me tell you two things,” I say. “One–” I hold up one finger “–I have absolutely zero sense of style. None. So, I don’t know how much help I’ll be there. Two–” I add a second finger “–I’m no expert with guys. Don’t ask for any tips.”

“Do _you_ need boy advice?” she asks.

“No, I’m good.”

Raven holds up loose pink bellbottoms and a white floofy shirt. I shake my head. Don’t have to know fashion to know _that_ will never look good. I sit down on her bed and watch her paw through her clothes.

“I had something going for a few weeks with a guy I met in a bar. I think I’m good for a while.”

“You don’t need a relationship. Just have a fling.” She picks out a slim, red dress and holds it up. I raise my eyebrows and indicate a ‘maybe’ pile. “With Sean.”

“Ew, gross.”

“Alex?”

“He’s like, four years younger than me.”

“So? He’s hot.”

“Then _you_ go for him.”

Raven rolls her eyes and holds up another dress. Black, strapless. It’s way too sexy for a trip to the lab. Next.

“Well, Hank’s mine. So…Erik? Don’t say he’s too old.”

I consider. “He’s handsome, I’ll admit that. But Raven, you’re not hearing me. I’m not looking for a guy.”

Her next choice is a purple dress. I think she favors dresses. It’s short, but has a turtle-neck and long sleeves. I sort of like it, and I tell her so. That’s when she drops the bomb.

“Okay. Charles is available. And perfect for you. The psychic lovebirds.”

“What happened to what you said last night?” I say, fighting back annoyance. “The whole ‘he likes women he can just get and throw away’ thing?”

“I’m telling you to sleep with him, not marry him,” Raven says with a wide smirk that gets wider as I inexplicably blush. “Aw, you can’t hide for long around here. I’m the expert at hiding. And you don’t have to be a mind reader to see you’re into him.”

I scowl. So, it’s obvious I’m into him but he’s not into me? Screw him, then. “Your purple dress is plain like that.”

Raven gives me this look that means she knows I’m changing the subject, but goes with it. “I know. That’s why we _always_ accessorize.” She leads me to this tall cabinet that I thought held more clothes but instead holds an amazing selection of jewelry. She skillfully picks out gold dangling earrings, a gold belt that will knot and hang down past her hips, and a long, gold chain with a large circle pendant.

“I’ll go change,” she says excitedly, and rushes off to the bathroom.

I remain in front of the jewelry cabinet and run my fingers along what must be thousands of dollars’ worth of accessories, all the while wondering what it would have been like to grow up with everything Charles and Raven had. She was very lucky for Charles and his family to be so welcoming. Then I smile, because even though it was some years later, Charles welcomed me here, too.

Raven emerges from the bathroom with her hair down and her arms out, showing off. “Well, what do you think?”

“Hank will love it,” I say truthfully, because she looks amazing.

She rolls her eyes. “Yeah, if he even notices me.”

“Hank’s a nerd, Raven. And he’s busy. He’s got a lot on his mind.”

“So does Charles, but he notices you.”

I clear my throat awkwardly. “So – uh, what shoes are you going to wear?”

Raven laughs and goes to her closet to pick through her many pairs of heels. “You’re very easy to fluster. It’s entertaining.”

I grow quiet watching her go through enough shoes to cover a millipede, and then finally gather enough nerve to ask, “Raven, why would you say that you doubt Charles would ever go for me one day, and then tell me to go for him the next?”

“I don’t know,” she says with her back to me. “I thought about it today. After you guys took off and disappeared this morning.” Raven turns around and gives me a guileful look. “And I see how he looks at you when you’re not paying attention. I’m not stupid.”

My face gets hot and I wish I had never brought it up. I change the subject, again. “What is it that you like about Hank? Other than his boyish good looks.”

Raven emerges from the closet with a pair of black pumps, the straps dangling from her fingers. She looks sad. “The first time we were alone, he asked me for my blood.”

“That’s not weird.”

“No, he was…it was sweet.” Raven smiles at the memory. “He had been hiding his feet his entire life, wondering what it was like to be normal. I know how that feels. I just…connected with him.”

I match her smile. “Well, go impress him.”

“Thanks,” she says, and after putting on her pumps she dashes off out of the room and I wonder how she runs in those things without breaking her ankles.

I decide to wash up and put on something that isn’t sweats for a change, now that Raven has supplied me with clothes. My eyes are drawn to a pair of high-waisted red jean capris. I find a sleeveless, pale red polka-dot button up with these weird pieces of fabric that hang down in the front. I shrug and put the shirt on.

In the mirror, the shirt looks silly, with the fabric hanging there. I knot them together. Oh. That’s when I realize there’s about an inch of my stomach showing between the top of the pants and the bottom of the shirt. Interesting.

Time for shoes. The beige hi-tops won’t work. Neither will the black boots I wore here, and the pair of high-heels I wear to poker games are a bit excessive. I find flat white Converse in Raven’s extra room, still in the box, and think she won’t mind if I borrow them. Feeling satisfied with myself, I rush down the hall.

On the second flight of stairs, I catch the top of the banister, swing myself happily to the next flight, leap down the steps and smack right into Erik. His face flashes tranquility, annoyance, anger and then disbelief as he looks me up and down in about two seconds. All these insanely horrible images of Nazi Germany raid my mind. I wish Raven never told me about Erik. I try to clear the thoughts away.

“What?” Erik says harshly as I stare at him, and now I don’t blame him for being such an ass.

“Sorry,” I mumble, and run away in the opposite direction.

“Wait,” he says, and I stop, against my common sense. “Want to, er, play chess?”

I’m confused. “Why?”

His face hardens. “Never mind.”

“No – I just…don’t know how to play.”

“I’ll teach you, then. Meet me in the lounge room with the big fireplace in twenty minutes.”

“The one we were in yesterday?” I ask, because I think there may be ten lounge rooms in this place, separated on two floors.

“No, there was no fireplace there.” He lifts his head in the direction I was running to. “Follow the hall, you’ll find it.” He goes up the stairs and disappears.

I walk slowly down the hall, peek into each door as I go. Bathroom. A study. Drawing room. A room with a piano. Another bathroom. A game room with stuffed animal heads and a fancy display of guns. _Another_ bathroom.

“Leah!”

Ah, that sweet voice. I turn and see Charles walking towards me with his hands tucked casually in his pockets.

“Hey, Charles.”

He does a quick scan of me like Erik had, and, like Erik, seems to approve. Only Charles smiles. “The sweat outfit never did you justice.”

I blush. “Thanks.”

“Where are you off to?”

“Erik offered to teach me to play chess. Can you believe that? I guess you can’t go off to war without knowing how to play chess, right?”

Charles tilts his head to the side ever so slightly, but he keeps an amused smile on his lips. I cast my senses out, searching for his aura, and find a hint of jealousy. Maybe Raven was right. I hide my delight behind an ace poker face.

“Where is Erik now?” Charles asks, innocently enough.

“I think he went to shower. He looked sweaty.”

“Yes, we were just outside.”

“Oh,” I say. _Poker face! Poker face!_ I clear my throat. “What were you two doing?”

“Just training. Trying to get Erik to expand his power.”

“What are you going to do now?”

“Probably work with Alex a bit. He needs target practice. I’m running out of mannequins, though. Might need Moira to bring over more.”

I nod, my stomach twisting at the sound of Moira’s name. I say the next thing that comes to my mind in order to forget about the whole ordeal. “Oh, I was wondering why this place needs so many bathrooms? Every few feet there’s a toilet.”

Charles laughs. I make a note to joke more, just to hear him laugh. “You know, I’ve no idea. This place has forty-eight rooms. It was built for plenty of people, and honestly, I wouldn’t want to be waiting in line to use the loo.”

“True,” I say. “Sounds more like an office or a school, though, than a house.”

“You’re right,” Charles says, and his face gets this dreamy look that I don’t understand. “Well, I’m off. Have a good chess lesson. It’s a wonderful game. Do learn fast, though. I’d like someone to beat Erik who won’t know what his next move will be.” And he wanders away.

I find the lounge. In front of the fireplace, two sofas face each other, and in between them on a cherry wood coffee table is an elegant steel carved chess set. It must stay out as decoration. I quickly scan the bookshelves in this room, hoping to find a manual on chess. Charles’s family has a thing for books, as there are books in practically every room, but a chess manual is probably the one thing they don’t have.

I sit on one of the sofas and fiddle with a chess piece while I wait. Sometime later, the chess piece in my hand flies away and lands on its space on the board. I look up and see Erik leaning against the doorframe, much like he had the other day, and I get a strong desire to raise every single chess piece in the air just to say, _Hey, look, I can do that metal thing, too,_ and wipe that superior look off his face. I could do it with the telekinesis, but it wouldn’t serve my point.

Erik crosses the room and takes a seat facing me. He wears dark pants this time, and a red shirt. I look better in red. “First rule about chess: When you see a good move, look for a better one.”

Knowing perfectly well that Erik has probably never once won against him, I say, “Is that how you always beat Charles?”

Erik glares at me. “You’re a smartass, you know that?”

“Yes,” I say. “That’s why I’m surprised you asked me to play.”

“Well, I’m a smartass, too.”

I roll my eyes. “So how do you play chess.”

Erik explains the pieces to me, starting with the king, and moves the pieces around to demonstrate. The king is the most important piece, since losing him means the end of the game. He is also the weakest, ironically. The king can move one square in any direction – up, down, to the sides, and diagonally – but he can never move himself onto a square where he could be captured.

When another piece threatens to capture the king, it’s called ‘check’. Erik demonstrates this by putting the black king in the line of fire to a white bishop. When there is no way for the king to escape check, it is called ‘checkmate’. Erik now puts the black king in the corner square and puts a white rook two squares in front of it. That means nothing to me, but I assume later it will.

Erik says the queen is the most powerful piece, and I like that. Like the king, she can move any one straight direction, but unlike him, she’s very speedy. She can move as far as she wants as long as she doesn’t move through any other pieces. Simple enough. So far. I think the queen is my favorite.

The rook, of which there are two, moves much like the queen: as far as it wants along straight lines, but not diagonally. Okay, I’m getting it. Chess doesn’t seem so hard.

There are two bishops as well, and they are the other half of the queen. It moves, again, as far as it wants, but only diagonally. Like the rook, one is on a dark square and one is on a light square, and as it only moves diagonally, it is stuck on its original color. They work well together because they each cover the squares the other can’t.

The knight. My enemy. The two pieces that will be my demise. They move two squares in one direction and then one more move at a ninety-degree angle, like an L. They are the only pieces that can ‘hop’ other pieces.

Finally, we come to the pawns, the little bastards. I thought the knights were bad. They consist of half the team. They only move forward one square at a time, except for their first move, when they can move one or two spaces (but they can’t capture on their first move), or when they capture, in which they move diagonally, but also one square forward. Since pawns only capture diagonally, if there is a piece directly in front of them, friend or foe, they can’t move. Stupid things. They are generally weak pieces, according to Erik, unless they manage to make it all the way across the board. Then they are promoted and become another piece of that player’s choice: a queen, rook, bishop, or knight. Great, one more thing for me to remember.

Each piece is worth points, but for now we won’t play with points. Erik also says each space has a designated letter and number, but we’ll forgo those as well.

This all sounds incredibly fun, but I’m nervous. Even though Erik promises to take things easy on me, I doubt he will. There’s probably so much he hasn’t told me.

“So, protect your king, don’t just give your pieces away, control the center, and try to use all your pieces. Are you ready?” he asks me.

“No, but let’s go.”

“Okay. White moves first, and that’s on my side, so, I’ll go first.” After a moment he adds, “And no mind reading!”

“Erik, if I wanted to read your mind, I could have learned everything you just said in the past fifteen minutes – and more – in about two, and probably become an expert chess player in five.”

Erik throws me a barely satisfied look and moves one of his pawns up two white spaces. I mirror his move on my side of the board. Maybe I’ll just mirror all his moves until I get the hang of it.

After twelve of Erik’s moves and eleven of mine, he takes my king. “Checkmate,” he announces smugly.

“What the hell?” I grumble. “I thought you were going easy on me!”

“I lied.”

“Rematch,” I order, and we reset the board.

He lets the game go a little farther this time. I take a couple of his pawns with a bishop and my queen, who I move around quite a bit. I think he can tell that I favor her. Then, Erik does something that totally pisses me off. I have a pawn safely on a white square, two squares up from one of his pawns on a black square that he hasn’t moved yet. He takes that pawn, moves my pawn out of the way, sets his pawn on the white square, and removes my piece from the board.

“Hey!” I shout. “The hell! I thought pawns couldn’t capture on the first move.”

“ _En passant_ ,” Erik says simply, and lines my pawn neatly next to the six other black pieces along the side of the board.

“What did you call me?” I snarl. I don’t speak French.

“It means ‘in passing’, genius. A pawn can use its initial move to advance two squares and capture a neighboring pawn, if there’s one. It’s called an _en passant_ capture.” He grins arrogantly.

“Well, why didn’t you tell me that before?”

“Do you understand how many combinations of moves there are in chess? I’d still be here telling you about them while everyone else is off fighting Shaw.”

I sit back against the couch and pout. It hits me that Erik was probably just trying to get a rise out of me, and it upsets me more that it works so well. He gets under my skin so easily. Just because he had a hard life doesn’t mean he has to make everyone else miserable – or me, at least. He seems perfectly fine with the others. He actually seems to like Charles. I never did anything to Erik. Certainly not what Klaus Schmidt did to him, yet he seems just as spiteful towards me at times like I was the one who held him prisoner. As I try to push the thoughts about Shaw/Schmidt and his connection to Erik from my mind, Erik says, “What, are you done playing?”

“No, I was just thinking about Schmidt – I mean Shaw, and the war…” My voice trails off. Oops.

“How do you know about that?” His eyes dart up to my forehead. “Never mind.”

“No, I swear, I didn’t read your mind,” I say hastily.

“Then who told you? Charles?”

“I saw it in…his mind. By accident. When I first met him.” I don’t want to give Raven away, but I didn’t mean to throw Charles under the bus, either. I hope I made him sound innocent enough. “Everyone knows, Erik. You told the CIA. Why can’t I know?”

“Because you just got here!” he shouts. When he yells, his German accent is more prominent. “Why are you even going to fight in this war? What’s your purpose?”

“Charles recruited me,” I say quietly.

He huffs lightly. “He didn’t recruit you. He was _intrigued_ by your power. He wanted to study you, not bring you into combat.”

“He told me I could train if I wanted,” I say.

“And what have you done? Ran circles around the mansion? Played chess?”

“You’re a real ass, you know that?” I snap. My voice rises to match his, and soon, we are on our feet yelling at each other.

“I warned you about that beforehand!”

“Then why did you bother asking me to play?”

“Because I wanted to know what Charles saw in you!” he roars. “And quite frankly, I don’t see much!”

I lose it. I reach out with my senses for anything metal in the room. There isn’t a lot that I could lift without tearing it out of walls, but what I do find serves my purpose. All the metal objects – a pen holder, small metal decorative statues, a picture frame, all the chess pieces, and other things swirl at an alarming rate around Erik’s body.

“So, you can move things with your mind,” he says, clearly unimpressed. “Some telepaths can do that.”

“They’re _metal_ ,” I say through gritted teeth, hoping he gets the meaning. He does. As his mild shock turns to recognition I mold the objects around his chest. Erik shakes his head as if I’m the most pathetic person in the world and then cracks open the makeshift metal plate. It falls to his feet with a dull clank. And then, he’s amused.

“Well, maybe I was wrong about you. For the longest time, I thought I was the only one who could do that. Maybe you’re more intriguing than I thought.”

Against my better wishes, in all my anger and hatred toward Erik, I say heatedly, “I should be, I got the power from you.”

“How?” he asks.

“A handshake.”

His face is still but his eyes move back and forth as he works through the memory of our first meeting, our handshake, how I shocked him. His eyes stop darting around and meet mine as he finishes connecting the dots.

“So, what? You take mutant’s powers?”

“And human’s life force.”

He starts to laugh, a hearty, almost evil laugh. It sort of scares me. “Look at that. I really was wrong about you. Charles has a secret weapon?”

“I wasn’t supposed to tell.”

“Looks like you blew your cover, sweetheart.”

“Could you just…not tell him that I told you? Keep the secret, please?”

Erik steps around the table with a malicious grin on his face, like a predator stalking his prey. I take a step back and hit the sofa. He advances until he’s inches away from me. I smell his aftershave as he leans toward my neck to whisper seductively, “Seal it with a kiss?”

I glare at him. “No.”

“Then there’s no telling it won’t slip out,” Erik says silkily as he taps his head.

I grit my teeth. “Then I’ll just tell Charles I told you.” That means I have to tell Charles _now_ , or else he’ll think I can’t keep my mouth shut. Which I can’t, apparently. But that’s better than Charles finding out about it from Erik.

Erik chuckles and quickly brushes his lips against my neck – something I can’t believe he’s daring enough to do – but the contact is so feather-light that my body doesn’t shock him. Good thing, too, because my emotions run so high right now I’m not sure if I could hold back my power and he would get the full force of it. Not that that’d be a bad thing, anyway. I push away from Erik, run out of the room and slam the door behind me, dimming Erik’s continued evil laughter.

“Ass,” I grumble as I storm down the hall.

Beyond the windows, the sun sets. My stomach growls. Erik and I were in the lounge for maybe an hour, so it’s got to be around dinner time. I’ll check the kitchen first.

I find Charles giving Alex and Moira a cooking lesson. Alex is all sweaty. He and Charles must have just come up from the bunker. Alex munches on the carrots Moira and Charles peel. Moira peels them slowly. Charles, swift and expertly.

“What’s for dinner?” I ask.

“Beef stew,” Charles says. “Come, join us. You can dice the onions.”

“I’m not really in the mood to cry,” I say. “Can I peel carrots?”

Charles laughs. “Onions only have that effect if your knife is dull. And I assure you, all the blades are sharp. Can you dice onions?”

“I’ll fare,” I say, mocking his accent in a light tone. He scoffs with a smile. I wash my hands in the large basin sink before selecting a knife from the knife block on the counter. I peel the five onions and cut them into fours, then cut those fours into fours, then squeeze them gently with my hands so they fall into layers. That’s about as dicey as I can get.

I need to tell Charles about what happened before Erik finds us. I can’t pull him away from making dinner, and besides, he’s in the middle of a conversation. I wonder if he can handle talking to Moira and Alex as well as having a chat with me in his head. I let down my shield a bit.

 _Can you manage this?_ I ask.

“You want to sear the beef a–” Charles stops mid-sentence and looks up, then finishes, “–bit first.” _Yes. Is something wrong?_

 _Can you decide?_ I push impressions of my encounter with Erik forward. At first, I want to be a jerk and make Erik out to be the bad guy. He sort of was, but I remember that once Charles talks to Erik, the real story will come out anyway.

_Oh, Leah._

_I’m sorry._

_He’s the last person I wanted to find out about your special gift._

_Can you erase it from his memory? I know that’s one of_ your _special gifts._

_He would never forgive me, and I need him on our side right now._

_Why is it such a bad thing if he knows?_

_What do you think is the first thing he will do if he is not on our side anymore?_

It doesn’t take me long to figure it out. _Recruit._

_And, like I said yesterday, you can possibly be the most powerful mutant on Earth. You would be his strongest ally. I’ve no doubt you could potentially kill his enemies with a single touch. Or with just your mind._

Really? I push the thought from my mind.

_I would never turn evil._

_Sometimes, our past influences us in ways none of us are prepared for, and we make decisions we once thought we were incapable of making._

Suddenly, the way Erik was tortured and what I went through when I was younger link up in my head. They were drastically different, but they had similarities. Maybe he and I aren’t so unalike after all.

I lay awake in bed later that night after my bath, thinking of Erik and our confrontation. In the heat of the moment I didn’t give much credit to what he had said about Charles, and as much as I hate to admit it, I think Erik is right. Someone like him has no reason to lie to me. I don’t need anything from him, he doesn’t need anything from me. And of course, there’s what Charles said the day we met to corroborate Erik’s story.

“ _We have a long list. We’re just scratching the surface_ ,” Erik had said.

“ _I know, but_ this _is something I hadn’t anticipated,”_ Charles had replied.

And he had looked right at me after he said that. All this time I thought he meant he just hadn’t anticipated seeing me there when he thought I was so far away. He could have just as easily been referencing the incredible, dangerous power I have locked inside me…

My mind wanders around to Erik and Auschwitz and the torment that Klaus Schmidt put him through. I can no longer feel sorry for myself when I’m in such close proximity to someone who had that awful of a childhood. Nothing can compare to growing up in concentration camps.

The beef stew churns in my stomach, threatening to make a reappearance. I roll over and try to think of anything else in order to fall asleep.


	4. Time to Fly, Time to Die

_October 24 th, 1962_

_Westchester County, New York_

I dream that Charles chases me with knives and onions, and his face is bloody and his impeccable clothes are torn. I have to run, run, run, always running, but I’ve been running for so long that I can’t run anymore. Erik appears, and he says he can make it all disappear if I just kiss him. But I can’t, because Charles will find out, and Erik just laughs and says, _Who,_ that _Charles? The madman with the knife and onion?_ And I turn and see Charles running in place, knife and onion raised, his face in a silent, murderous scream, and I turn back and Erik grabs me and kisses me and I wake up gasping and drenched in sweat.

In the bathroom, I splash water on my face and stare at myself in the mirror. I have odd dreams all the time. There’s no reason to read into this. What would I read into, anyway? That Charles would become my enemy and Erik my ally? I’ve known these people for less than a week, they’re all just acquaintances…aren’t they?

Despite my wild eyes, I actually look a bit better than I have for years. The country air, decent food, _friends_ , all does me good. I brush my teeth, run a comb through my hair a few times and go back out to my room.

Outside the sky slowly lightens. I figure I might as well get up. I put on the sweat outfit I tucked away in the drawer the other day. After lacing up my hi-tops I head downstairs, following the mouthwatering aroma of coffee.

I find Hank in the kitchen with a cup of coffee, reading the newspaper. He dresses normally, in brown pants and a checkered shirt, and his dark blue tie is held down with a tie clip. A half-eaten bagel sits on a tiny plate in front of him.

“Morning,” I say.

“Oh, good morning,” he says, pushing his glasses up his nose as he raises his head.

“You look surprised to see me.” I pull a mug from the cabinet, help myself to coffee, doctor it up with cream and sugar.

“I usually only see Erik down here this early.”

I scowl at the spoon at the mention of Erik’s name and then take my coffee to the table. “Any important news updates?”

Hank folds the paper and sets it to the side. “Just reports of people preparing for an impending nuclear attack, and anticipating the president’s report.”

“Fascinating.”

Hank looks me over. “Why aren’t you afraid?”

“Should I be?”

“Do you know the impact a nuclear war would have?” he asks me.

I shake my head. I mean, I know what nuclear means. A whole lot of power. But I guess, no, I don’t really know the extent of all the fuss. Also, politics were never my forte.

“One nuclear bomb has the blast itself, which is half the energy, and the rest of the energy is composed of thermal, ionizing, and residual radiation. The blast radius can be up to three kilometers in a one megaton airburst. There’s a fifty percent chance of death from that one explosion.”

I slowly raise and lower my head once. Oh. “I see…”

“Yeah,” he says. “It almost seems pointless looking for a cure for my mutation.”

“Are you close to finding one?” I ask.

“Very,” he says, and allows himself a smile. “Raven’s DNA was very helpful. Her genes are extraordinary. They age at half the rate of a normal female. I mean, mutant’s altered genes already help us age at a slower rate than humans, but when she’s forty, she’ll still have the leucocytes of a teenager. She has the most amazing cellular structure I’ve ever seen…” Wistful. Admiring. That’s how he looks right now. I realize that this nerdy mutant just might have a crush on Raven.

“Hey, Hank?” I say carefully, and he comes back to the now. “Do you think…do you think you could cure Charles’s power?”

He looks at me funny. “Why would I want to do that?”

“I don’t know…” I bite my lip. “The other evening, when I shielded his mind from all the voices, he was just so…peaceful. I was wondering if there was a way that a medicine could do that.”

“I really don’t know,” Hank says. “I’ve barely scratched the surface with altering the physical markers on the genes. I would have to do a whole different gene mapping to isolate the ones for whatever it is that makes Charles…Charles.”

“Yeah,” I say. “Just a thought.”

Hank nods and takes a sip of his coffee. I get up and dig out a bagel from the bag and put it in the toaster. Alex stumbles in, rubbing sleep from his eyes, and Hank and I mumble our good mornings. Alex yawns in response.

“Want a bagel?” I ask him. He nods and leans against the counter to wait.

“Hey, Alex, I fixed the sensors on the panel of your suit,” Hank says. “I reinforced it with an alloy that should handle the beams better. Want to try it out?”

“Jeeze, man, let a guy get some breakfast first,” Alex whines as he runs his hands over his face. Hank looks down dejectedly at the table, and I glower at Alex.

My bagel pops up and I spread it with cream cheese. Raven walks in the kitchen, smiling, and Hank sits up straight. About ten seconds later, the other bagel pops up. I grab it and put it on another plate.

“Hey Raven, want a bagel?” Without waiting for her to respond, I sit at the table and slide the plate in front of her.

“What the hell!” Alex grumbles to himself as he loads another bagel into the toaster. I just smile at Hank, and he returns it appreciatively.

Charles materializes in the doorway of the kitchen with Sean. “What’s this?” he says as he observes the four of us in turn. “Bagels? Have I taught you all nothing?” He goes to the refrigerator and proceeds to load eggs, bacon, sausages, and potatoes on the counter and gets to work.

“We were waiting for you,” Alex explains.

“You, especially, should know better. You just had a lesson last night,” Charles says as he waves a frying pan in Alex’s direction.

Raven leans over to me and whispers craftily, “He cooks, too.” I aim a kick at her under the table and catch Hank. He yelps out in pain.

“Oops, sorry,” I say, and hiss back at Raven, “I thought I wasn’t marrying him?”

The boys stare at us curiously even though they carry on their own conversation, including Charles, who targets an inquisitive glance at us every now and then. Still, Raven continues to talk in a hushed voice.

“Wouldn’t it be nice to have breakfast in bed the morning after?”

“I don’t know, let’s find out,” I whisper, and then raise my voice to ask, “Hey, Hank, can you cook?” Raven’s eyes double in size, and when she aims a kick at me, she doesn’t miss. “Ahahhh.” I grip my leg and stick my tongue out at her.

“Are you two all right over there?” Charles asks us.

“Fine,” Raven and I say at the same time with perfect simulated smiles.

Charles shakes his head. “Scrambled eggs or sunny-side up?”

“Scrambled!” we chant, and bang our butter knives on the table in unison.

After breakfast, in which Erik is suspiciously absent, Sean and Raven are on cleanup duty. That gives Hank, Alex, Charles and I a chance to escape. I really don’t care if I go down to the bunker with them again, but I don’t want to be around Raven making more comments about me having sex with Charles, especially if Sean is around. Even though Sean seems to not know what’s going on half the time, I’m pretty sure he still listens.

Alex mentions that he wants to get a morning run in before he goes down to the bunker. Apparently, if he’s got a lot of pent up energy from not using his power, the impact is greater and the less control he has. I think he must have some insane power, since he apparently just practiced with Charles yesterday. Charles thinks this is a fine idea and says we should all join him. Alex agrees, but I see him roll his eyes when he turns around. So, Charles and Hank disappear to change, and I go with Alex outside.

It’s a beautiful morning in late October. Cool, with wispy clouds obscuring the clear blue sky. A light wind rustles the leaves and grass and sweeps my hair off my shoulders. I tie my hair up in a ponytail.

“Okay, I’m off,” Alex says.

“Wait up!” I call. I run after him, and he tries to subtly put on burst of speed.

“I know you and the animal and Charles like to race, but I’m actually trying to get a workout in, all right?” Alex says. He keeps his elbows tucked to his sides, his head up and straight forward. He manages to find good leg form on the gravel.

“What’s your problem with Hank?” I ask him. “He’s been nothing but nice to you since I got here, and all you do is pick on him.”

“Easy target. And it’s fun.”

“Well, would you cut him some slack? He’s doing a lot for you guys.”

Alex breaks his hard-forward stare to shoot me an odd look. “Why did you say ‘you guys’? You’re here, too.”

I think back to my conversation with Erik last night and my insides twist painfully. “I don’t know. Charles brought me in after the fact, after you had already formed a team. I feel like…second string.”

“Teams have a second string for a reason,” Alex says. “If they thought they could do it with just their main guys, they would.”

I make a face. “Thanks, I guess.” Thanks for solidifying that I’m basically backup.

We round the mansion twice and come up on our third circle when we see Charles and Hank in the middle of the gravel. Charles stands back with his hands on his hips, observing. Hank stares at his bare feet and wiggles his toes in the gravel.

“What’s he doing?” Alex says with a grin that reminds me of an animal going after an easy kill.

“Alex, leave him alone,” I order sternly. We watch from the bushes without drawing the attention of Hank. Charles, of course, knows we’re there.

“If you want to beat me this time, you have to set the beast free,” Charles tells Hank.

“Don’t you want to wait for Leah?” Hank asks.

“I’m sure she won’t mind.” Charles takes a ready position. “On your marks – get set – Go!”

They take off and oh, Charles doesn’t stand a chance. Before he’s down about a third of the length of the mansion, Hank is gone. Vanished in a smooth blur as if he were running on air, barely disturbing the ground. My attention is on Charles; I don’t see Hank come up on my left a few seconds later in a gray flurry. He laps Charles and taps him on his shoulder. Alex and I make our way down the path to them.

Charles stops in his tracks and laughs breathlessly. “Congratulations, Hank! Robert Louis Stevenson would have been proud.”

“Impressive, Hank,” Alex says. Hank nods warily. “Feet like those, all you need is a red nose.” Alex claps Hank on the back. “Right, Bozo?”

“I’m done here,” Hank snaps, and takes off up the grass and through the front doors.

“Thank you, Alex,” Charles admonishes with a shake of his head. Alex just chuckles, but when he sees my look, his face drops.

“I’m going to get a few more laps in,” he says, then takes off at a jog.

“I don’t think Hank will work with Alex right now,” Charles says, staring off at where Alex turned the corner.

“So, what now?” I ask.

Charles lifts his face to the sky. “Weather isn’t too bad. I suppose we could give Sean’s wings another try.”

“Are you going to shove him out of the third-floor window instead of the second this time?” I ask.

“No,” Charles says broodingly, and that’s when I notice his focus is in the distance, right on the satellite. “I’ve got something else in mind. I suggest you change or grab a coat. It might be chilly up there.”

I hurry up to my room while Charles goes to collect Sean and Hank and let them know about his new idea. I pull on dark pants and a black long-sleeve turtle-neck. I grab a dark gray overcoat, wash my face in the bathroom, decide to leave my hair up in a ponytail, and put on my black boots. I find Charles dressed similarly in the hall.

“When did you come up here?” I ask him.

“Just after you did. Let’s go, Hank and Sean are waiting in the foyer.”

In the front hall, Sean and Hank, now dressed in his clothes from this morning complete with a brown overcoat, stand a few feet away from each other in uncomfortable silence. Sean has the wing harness strapped over his gray sweat outfit, and he looks high and excited.

“What do we have here?” a voice that causes my skin to break out in goose flesh says. Erik stalks into the foyer.

“We’re going to try Sean’s wingsuit again,” Hank says.

“Oh, this ought to be fun,” Erik says with a smirk. “I think I’ll join you.”

I keep my distance from Erik and the others as we walk the mile to the satellite. The wispy clouds from the early morning slowly condense to form gray masses that cover the majority of the sky and increase the level of wind. Charles was right, it will be cold up on top of the satellite. I hope Erik freezes in his thin gray sweatshirt.

There’s a metal ladder on the side of the satellite that leads up to a small ledge, almost like a balcony that overlooks the concave side of the satellite. As we climb, I count the rungs. One…two…three…It’s a long climb.

One hundred and thirty-two…one hundred and thirty-three…one hundred and thirty-four…one hundred and thirty – oh, thank god, we’re at the top. The wind blows harder up here and I pull my coat tighter. The others pile onto the small balcony. I maneuver my way to Hank’s left, away from everyone else, which is the farthest I can be from Erik. I watch Charles position Sean at the small opening in the railing. Again, Sean is torn between fright and exhilaration.

“You truly believe I’ll fly this time?” Sean asks Charles.

“Unreservedly,” Charles says.

Sean nods. “I trust you.”

With a straight face, Charles says, “I’m touched.”

“I don’t trust _him_ ,” Sean adds, with a slight nod to his left, where Hank stands on the other side of Charles.

Charles barely looks back to mutter to Hank, “Say nothing.”

Sean peers over the edge, where the off-white metal concavity looms out like a large, terrifying bowl of death. We’ve got to be about three hundred feet in the air.

“I’m gonna die!” he squeals.

“It’s all right,” I tell him. “Look, we’re not going to make you do anything you don’t feel comfortable with, okay?” While Sean hesitates, I shoot a dirty look at Erik.

In response, Erik reaches out and says, “Here, let me help,” and pushes Sean off the balcony. Then, I scream, Sean screams, Charles shouts madly, “Erik!” But Erik just laughs.

“What? You know you were thinking the same,” Erik says, and we all look over the balcony at Sean who, as he screams, emits supersonic waves that catch in the folds of his wings and carry him down the length of the satellite dish smoothly and out over the tops of the trees. Every so often, he screams a little. The supersonic sound echoes back off the dish and he gains a little more momentum.

“Wonderful!” Charles says cheerily. I look over at a very pale Hank, who looks incredibly relieved.

“All right, the Banshee can fly,” Erik says. “I’m off, then.” He lowers himself down the seemingly endless metal ladder.

“I should go, too,” Hank says. “I'll direct Sean around the grounds and help him land safely.” As he says this, Sean makes a sharp turn, glides up the length of the satellite, and does a little spin in the air before screeching again, and flies away in the opposite direction. He looks incredibly happy. Free.

After Hank leaves, Charles goes to the top of the ladder and waits. “Are you coming?” he asks me.

I look back out at the vastness, at Sean enjoying his flight. “In a bit. I want to stay up here a little while longer.”

“All right, then. Be careful coming down.”

It’s incredible the drastic turn of events my life took in just three days. Being here in the mansion, with others of my kind, is liberating, freeing, and that feels even more so if I were to hold my arms out wide, close my eyes and let the wind catch me high up here on the very top of the satellite. Almost like I had a wingsuit of my very own. I thought my past would scar me for years to come. Truthfully, I haven’t given much thought to it. I don’t really want to. Why would I? The lashes. The yelling and screaming. The frightened, desperate faces of the other kids in the homes. All the nights going to bed with an empty stomach as punishment for inflicting such fright.

But is here in the mansion really any better? Yes, I have a better bed, nice clothes, three extremely satisfying meals a day. I don’t have to constantly move from place to place, engaging in illegal activities for money. I’m surrounded by people that are like me. Mutants who willingly accept me because they see nothing wrong with me.

Tomorrow President Kennedy is going to give an address on the state of the U.S. against the Soviet Union. And that just might set a war in motion. So, I’ve escaped, only to find that my freedom might end anyway.

I pull my sleeves down over my hands and rub some warmth back into my nose and cheeks. It’s really cold up here, but I like the sensation. The numbness. I lean against the railing and watch the clouds slowly roll and the sun switch places in the sky. The trees sway as if in a dance. Every so often, a yellow and blue blur shoots up and down between the trees and glides along the grass, darting by a brown mass I figure is Hank. Hank runs back and forth after Sean, who I can just imagine cackling as he evades him time and time again.

Having never paid attention to politics, I don’t really understand what it is we’re trying to do or if there’s any way out of it. I spent so much of my life focused on surviving that I never bothered to understand how mankind really worked. How our nation really worked. It seemed so arbitrary to me, the entire nation, the entire _world_ , when my days were so consumed with and centered around just trying to make it to the next one. How wrong I was, to be so ignorant. There was a nuclear war waiting for us.

I didn’t ask for any of this. Then again, I don’t think anyone ever does. I don’t want to think about it anymore – my past, the war, nuclear bombs, asshole mutants trying to take over the world – so I try to search the grounds for the lake Charles mentioned and fill my mind with the memory of our kiss. Life is too short to worry about such trivial things like who said what, and what someone’s motives are. And by joining Charles’s band of misfit mutants that are going to try to save the world, I significantly decreased my lifespan.

While the wind whips my hair around my frozen face, I daydream about Charles wandering back to the satellite to valiantly climb the ladder and declare his nonexistent love for me, and then sweep me off my feet in a deep, romantic kiss. There was never any romance between Logan and I, just plain passion, but somehow, I see Charles as the romantic type. I can almost hear his shoes on the metal rungs, getting louder as he approaches, and my heart fills with butterflies that turn to stone and fall heavily to the pit of my stomach as I turn and find not Charles, but Erik standing at the top of the ladder.

I immediately back away as far as I can. “What do you want?” I snap.

“Oh, now, is that any way to talk to your fellow teammate?” Erik says loftily.

Teammate? Suddenly I’m part of this team? “Don’t patronize me,” I warn him. “What do you want?” I debate opening my mind and reaching out for Charles. My eyes dart to the mansion.

“No, no,” Erik says with a chuckle. “Don’t go calling your boyfriend. We don’t need him here. I just want to have a chat, you and me.”

“I think you said plenty last night.”

“And that’s why I’m here,” Erik says, spreading his arms to indicate the satellite. “I wanted to apologize to you.”

I narrow my eyes. Is this some sort of trick? “Okay. Apologize.”

“You don’t sound very grateful,” he says.

“Just hurry up and get this over with,” I growl at him.

Erik laughs heartily. “Well, I’ve never heard that from a woman before.”

I make a sort of disgusted sound in my throat. “Why did you have to come all the way up here, anyway? Couldn’t you wait until I got back to the mansion?”

“I didn’t want to be interrupted.”

“I think you’re stalling. What’s wrong? Have you never apologized before?”

“You know, that’s really no way to talk to a friend.”

“We’re friends now?” I say skeptically.

“But of course. Anyone who is good enough for Charles – and who possesses that _astonishing_ amount of power – is good enough for me.” He says this with a malicious grin that crinkles the sides of his eyes and puts an unsettling feeling in my stomach. And I’m reminded, sickly, of what Charles said last night, about Erik possibly abandoning us and recruiting people of his own.

“Are we done?” I ask weakly.

“One last thing.” He steps forward, and I grow fearful. “I just wanted to say I’m sorry for the way I treated you yesterday. It was wrong of me.”

I’m wary of a trap, but I allow myself to say, “Thank you. And I’m sorry I yelled at you and encased you in metal.”

Erik laughs. It’s nothing like Charles’s musical laugh. “It’s amazing what you can do.”

“So I’ve heard.”

“What is it like to be able to access all of that power at will?”

“Normal, I guess.”

He chuckles lightly. “It must be nice to not need someone to dig through your mind in order to reach your full potential.”

“Does Charles get in your head a lot?”

“Not since I told him not to,” Erik says. “It can get annoying, especially when you’re planning something.” My eyes widen, and this apparently amuses him. “Nothing _bad_. I have my own vendetta against Shaw. I stole his file back in Division X. Charles caught me, got inside my head, offset me by saying he ‘felt my agony’ and that he could help me.” He scoffs. “As if just feeling it second-hand was anything like the real thing.”

I’m not careful at hiding my surprise that Erik, hard, heated, difficult Erik, talks to me like this, about personal things. It leads me back to my earlier thought, that this may be a trap. But I have to go along with it. “That’s almost exactly what he said to me. I wanted to punch him.”

“I wish you had.” As Erik looks at me, almost favorably, I think for a moment we sort of connect, and I remember how I thought we weren’t so unalike. Now that’s becoming more true. And that’s very, very dangerous. Erik wanted to go off to get Shaw on his own before. Who’s to say he won’t go again?

I’m cold, and hungry. I tell Erik so, mainly as an excuse to get off the balcony and out of this conversation, and we climb down the ladder and walk back to the mansion. I apparently missed lunch while I was up there, so I stalk to the kitchen to hunt for a snack to hold me over until dinner. Sean is there, eating pretzels.

“How was your flight?” I ask him as I shrug out of my coat.

“Incredible, man!” he practically shouts. “You should try it some time.”

He’s just joking, but it dawns on me that it’s actually possible for me to do so. Just one touch, and I could be screeching my way through the sky. I wonder if I should keep a list of all the mutants I touch and their power, whether I do it by accident or on purpose.

“Want a pretzel?” Sean asks, holding up the bag.

“Yeah, thanks,” I say, thoroughly moved by his simple offer. We sit there and talk about our favorite TV shows. His is _The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show_ , which hardly surprises me. Mine is _I Love Lucy_. He also catches me up on the latest episodes of _The Twilight Zone_ and _Gunsmoke_.

“Ah, what have we here,” Charles says when he finds Sean and I at the kitchen counter, battling over the last pretzel. “I think I see my two culinary pupils for the evening.”

“I think I see the guy who’s going to give me the last pretzel,” I say.

“Oh ho, you’ve got jokes,” Sean quips, and manages to snap the pretzel in half and I come away with the bigger piece.

“Dreams do come true,” I say, and pop the pretzel in my mouth.

Charles opens the refrigerator and examines its contents. “Let’s see…chicken, asparagus, mushrooms…”

“Charles, did one of those fancy colleges you went to happen to be a chef’s school?” I ask as he takes out a package of meat and examines it.

“No. Why?”

“Then how do you know how to cook so well?”

“It just interests me. And whatever interests me, I learn.”

I shrug one shoulder. “Must be nice.”

“Look at that. We have shallots!” Charles holds up a handful of bulbous red roots. At Sean’s and my odd expression, he explains further. “It’s an onion.”

“Ah,” Sean and I say together.

“Come on, wash up. We’re making pan-seared chicken breast with shallots. Rice or mashed potatoes?” I vote for rice and Sean chooses mashed potatoes, so we do a quick arm wrestle to settle the dispute. His skinny little twig arms are no match for my skinny little twig arms, and I win. But only by distracting him with my mind. Whoops. “We’ll make wild rice,” Charles says with a scolding smile that he points at me. I can’t fool him.

I’m actually interested in learning about cooking, but Sean keeps ruining it by dropping the shallots on the floor or cutting his finger with a knife. Eventually, Charles makes him go sit at the counter and man the timer.

With my shield up, I don’t sense people as well as I used to. That’s why I wasn’t expecting Moira to walk into the kitchen brightly calling, “Hello!” halfway through the lesson. The sound of her voice makes my heart race and the spatula falls out of my hand, but I manage to catch it before it clatters onto the stove. I keep my back to her and stare out of the window above the sink.

“Hi,” Charles says while he wipes his hands on a towel. “Any news?”

“Just the usual.”

“I see.”

Hmm, that was odd. It’s awkward and tense between them. I wonder what happened. There’s so much to miss in this huge house because not everyone is at the same place at the same time. I’d search through Moira’s mind to find out, but I think Charles would catch me.

Our dinner ends up a success, and there’s not a single chunk of shallot or grain of rice left when it’s over. Those who aren’t cleaning up trudge out of the dining room, groaning with the weight of their full bellies. I help Raven wash dishes.

“Damn, two shifts in one day,” she complains.

“What happened?” I ask.

“This was originally my shift. But Hank was supposed to have the breakfast shift with Alex, so I switched with Alex. You know, for alone time.”

“Of course,” I say, when I would never go to such lengths.

“Well, when Alex was free, Charles planned a morning training session with him in the bunker. And he needed Hank for that. So, Sean took his place.” She rolls her eyes at me when I don’t say anything.

“Oh, right. Man, that’s a bummer.”

“Are you all right? You seem distracted.”

“Yeah, it’s just…” I consider telling her about Erik but think it’d be better to keep her out of it. “…a lot to take in, you know? You asked me before if I was worried. And now, I’m starting to be.”


	5. Second String, My Ass! I Own This!

_October 25 th, 1962_

_Westchester County, New York_

When I wake the next morning, it hits me that this is the day the president gives his address, and tomorrow we may go to war.

I try not to let my thoughts manifest as I dress in normal clothes – regular blue jeans, a thick, pale pink long-sleeve shirt, green jacket, and boots – and head down to breakfast. I’m not hungry but I force myself to eat, for appearances, for calories. The morning is fairly calm, and after lunch I stumble along after Charles, Hank and Alex down to the bunker. I don’t know why I go. Raven wants to lift weights again, which doesn’t interest me, and Sean went to take his wingsuit for another test flight. I don’t know where Erik went off to, and Moira’s at work. I just don’t want to be alone.

Today, Charles drags a single mannequin to the far end of the bunker and Hank makes an X on her stomach with black tape. Alex stands at the other end, swathed once more in the black vest with a newly designed metal plate, waiting as Charles instructed him. I hang out somewhere in the middle, with my leg against one of the portal lights, anticipating the heat seeping past my jeans so I can see how long it takes to burn my skin.

Hank rubs the last bit of tape in place and nods at Charles. Charles lifts his eyebrows briefly. “Wonderful work, Hank.”

“Thank you very much,” Hank says. He steps off to the side of the mannequin.

Charles addresses Alex now. His voice carries easily through the bunker. “All right, Alex. I want you to hit the X.” Charles looks at the mannequin, then sidesteps about a foot, placing himself at equidistance between him and the mannequin and Hank and the mannequin. “And try not to hit me, there’s a good chap.”

“You’re serious?” Alex calls.

“I’m very serious. I have complete and utter faith in you.”

Charles may believe in Alex, but I believe that one wrong movement from him and I’m going to be a crispy mutant. I look up and down the bunker. I’m closer to Charles and Hank than Alex, who sets up his stance. I leap forward and duck behind Charles. Hank winces and turns his head away.

I peek around Charles in time to see an amazing red plasma beam hurdling straight for us. I cringe as the plasma collides with the mannequin. Instead of bursting into an explosion like before, it just catches fire. Alex laughs heartily and raises his fist to make an OK sign. The vest worked. He can control the amount of energy he emits.

“Am I still a Bozo?” Hank asks him.

“Yes, Hank, you’re still a Bozo.” Hank’s face scrunches up in resentment, and Alex grins. “But nice job.”

I listen to them talk but I watch the flames burn. An idea catches inside me like the mannequin caught fire, and I wonder, I just wonder…

The idea continues to grow in my mind as we leave the bunker and return to ground level. Hank and Charles make plans to work in the lab, and on impulse, I hold Alex back.

“I need to borrow you,” I tell him. He looks intrigued but doesn’t ask questions. I lead him around the mansion, to a large lawn in front of the gardens. I situate Alex here, and then back up maybe fifteen yards until my feet are almost against the hedges that line the side of the mansion. I glance over and see Raven at the barbell bench in the weight room, looking at us peculiarly.

“What are you doing?” Alex asks me.

I close my eyes and take a deep breath. “Shoot a plasma beam at me.”

Alex looks like I just asked him to chew off his own foot. “Are you insane?”

“Possibly a small, tiny bit. But I need you to do this. It’s the only way.”

“The only way to what? Get yourself blown to bits?”

“Please, Alex? If I’m right about this, I can catch the energy.”

Alex shakes his head and starts to walk away. “You’re nuts.”

“No!” I shout. I run up to him and hold his shoulders, careful to stay on the area of sweatshirt that he hasn’t hacked off. “Please, can you do this for me?”

He grinds his teeth. “The last time I tried something like this, a friend got killed. I don’t want to do that again.”

“What do you mean?” I ask softly.

Alex shrugs out from under my grip and sighs. “His name was Darwin. He was killed by Shaw. After Angel betrayed us during the attack on Division X, Shaw stood there with his new ally and gloated. Darwin and I looked at each other and I knew we were thinking the same thing. He would pretend to join them as well, and I’d shoot a plasma beam at Shaw and his cronies and Darwin would protect Angel.”

Fury, or maybe resentment, makes Alex stop and shift his weight around. “Darwin adapted to survive. He could grow gills in water, become hard stone so my plasma beam wouldn’t hurt him.” Alex runs his hand through his short hair. “Shaw saw right through us. He just stepped forward and absorbed my energy. He laughed in our faces for trying to be noble and shoved a small ball of the plasma down Darwin’s throat and left. With Angel.”

Words escape me at first. Nobody mentioned this before. “This is different–”

“How is it different?” Alex snaps. “You’re asking me to use my power against you. You know, I still see Darwin’s body at night, going through all those different stages, trying to find one that could withstand the heat from the energy. Lava, steel, rock like the Earth’s crust. Your death will be much quicker, but I’ll still have to see that in my head all the time.”

“Alex, you’re learning to control your power. That’s why we’re here. And that’s what I’m trying to do as well. If I manage this, I could save a whole lot of lives.”

Alex narrows his eyes, slightly curious. “How?”

I sigh and try to explain it. “I have this sort of telekinetic energy. Watch.” I hold my palm down to the gravel path and raise up a handful of rocks. “I think that I may be able to wrap my telekinetic energy around your plasma energy and control it.”

“Why do you want to do that?”

“Because what if I succeed, and I was also able to contain missiles? Or nuclear energy, if one of the sides set off a nuke?” I say in a low voice. “If someone sets off the bomb that would start another world war, I could potentially contain it.”

“What would you do with the energy?” Alex asks. “The radiation?”

“Send it to space?” I shrug. “I don’t know. I don’t even know if it would work. Even if I manage to contain the energy I don’t know how far I can move it. That’s why I need to practice.”

“Okay. But why do I have to aim the beam _at_ you? Why can’t I aim it–” Alex looks around “–out there? And you just catch it and move it?”

“Um, for the pressure of not letting it hit me?” I offer.

Alex looks up at the mansion. “And why am I the one facing the house? What if I miss or you duck out of the way and I blow the place up? Hank took the vest.”

“Added pressure?” Alex shakes his head. “Please, Alex. This could mean the difference of life and death. For thousands of people.”

Raven appears from around the corner. “What are you guys doing?”

“Look, you have an audience,” Alex tells me. “More pressure.”

“We’re about to have a little demonstration,” I tell Raven. “Check it out.” I nudge Alex in the ribs. “Come on, Havok. Wreak some havoc.”

He rolls his eyes. I resume my spot by the hedges and instruct Raven to stay back, by an oak tree a few yards away. I face Alex and turn my hands palm-up.

“Hold on, let me focus. I’ll tell you when.” I close my eyes and take each breath with careful precision. This is the most reckless thing that I’ve attempted based on the fact that I think I can do something if I just let go and think I can do it. It’s just an extension of my telekinetic energy, that’s why I believe I _can_ do it, though.

Finally my body is calm enough. I release a bit of energy out like a telekinetic shield between my hands, similar to how I cast my senses or moved the charred mannequin hand and the rocks. “Okay. Go.”

Alex grits his teeth, balls his fist, and thrusts out his chest and hips. Instead of a hard beam Alex shoots red, circular discs of energy at me. Crap! I throw my arms out wide, keeping a shield of energy between them, and will my force field to grow ten times its size. I don’t absorb Alex’s plasma discs, but I deflect them. They hit my force field and explode in a shower of red and yellow sparks.

“Whoa!” Raven shouts, and Alex stares at me with his eyes bulging out of his head. “That was intense!”

“I’ll say,” I mutter. “Hey, Alex, you think you can go get that vest from Hank? I wasn’t expecting the discs. I need more focused energy.”

“I guess,” Alex says.

Just then, we hear banging on glass. We look around until we see Sean struggling with a lock on the third floor. My stomach clenches when I realize there was a good chance Erik or at least Charles heard Raven hitting the window yesterday. Finally, Sean gives up trying to unlock the window and just shoots a supersonic wave at it. Glass shatters and falls to the ground outside.

“Sean! What the hell?” Raven screams.

“Sorry! Couldn’t get the lock to work! Leah, Alex, whoa. What are you guys doing?”

“Training,” Alex says cynically.

“I thought you were out flying?” I call up to Sean.

“Needed a nap first. Then a loud boom woke me up. Can I join?” Sean looks expectantly between Raven, Alex and I.

“Um, only if you get my vest from Hank first,” Alex says.

“Right on, man.” Sean disappears from view. A few minutes later, he comes bounding onto the lawn, Alex’s vest in hand. Alex suits up and Sean joins Raven under the tree.

Alex and I ready our stances. I even my breathing once more, prepare a force field. Essentially, that’s what it is. And I kind of like the name. This time when Alex shoots the plasma beam I’m ready for it, and instead of just deflecting the energy, I contort my force field around it and shoot a ball of red energy up to the sky. I don’t know how far I can send it, but it’s about the height of a firework when it finally explodes in another fantastic burst of sparks.

There are cheers from the others, and I think, _Wow, I did it._ Then, my heart falls into my stomach faster than that plasma exploded.

“What the bloody hell are you doing?” Charles roars. I’ve never seen him mad before, and boy is he pissed. His face is twisted in fury as he stomps over the grass toward us. Hank trails behind him, looking scared. Charles comes right over to me and throws his face in mine. “What the hell were you thinking?”

I take a step back. “I can explain–”

Charles ignores me and points and yells at Alex, then scolds Raven and Sean as well. “Come here,” he snarls at me, and grabs me by the arm and drags me away from everyone else. “You’ve got one minute to tell me why Alex was shooting plasma beams at you and why you were doing…whatever the hell you were doing!”

“Okay, Charles, calm down,” I say quickly. “You don’t really know what you’re going to be dealing with when you go to Cuba. All you know is you’re going to be facing ships carrying a whole lot of firepower. So, what if I could defuse a detonated bomb? Or a nuclear missile? Do you know what that would mean?”

Charles rubs his temples in such a tiredly defeated way that I almost feel sorry for him. “Yes, I know what that would mean. But what you were doing back there was dangerous. For everyone! What if that shield of energy broke near the others? You could have killed them!”

Great. Now he’s scolding me like a child. I hang my head. “I’m sorry.”

“Honestly, though, what was going through your head?”

Nothing was going through my head, really. That’s why I did it. But when I take a moment to really think about why I wanted to see if I could contain Alex’s plasma energy, I end up with: “I just thought that maybe…this could be the way I contribute to the team. You know, do something good. Be important and not be second string.”

Charles lets out a frustrated sigh and pulls me into a tight embrace. I rest my cheek on his shoulder and take a gentle inhale while he says, “You could always do something good. You were always important. I’m sorry if I made you feel like you weren’t.” He pushes me back gently and my head swims with the aroma of soap and musk, which is stronger since it came from his skin. “You were meant to fight with us. But you didn’t have to almost kill yourself to prove that.”

I just shrug to keep from apologizing again, because that’s all I have to say.

“Hey, everyone!” Moira shouts. Charles and I turn back to the group and see Moira’s head poking out from one of the windows on the second floor. “The president is going to make his address in twenty minutes.”

I look around and see how late it is. I hadn’t even noticed the sky darkening. The clouds disappeared and the sun was brighter today, maybe that’s why I was thrown off. The six of us make our way back into the mansion and meet Moira and Erik in the lounge room where we all had pizza and beers for the five o’ clock address on what the news calls the Cuban Missile Crisis. We crowd around the sofa facing the television set.

The screen flips between two news reporters, a map, and a few scenes of U.S. naval ships while they prepare for the address. Then, when the camera switches to the president sitting at his desk in the Oval Office, everything gets blurry. Charles insists I sit down, and I get increasingly light headed. Everything is becoming so real.

I come back into focus in time to hear President Kennedy say, “It shall be the policy of this nation to regard any nuclear missile crossing the embargo line that surrounds Cuba as an attack by the Soviet Union on the United States, requiring a full retaliatory response upon the Soviet Union–” I miss the rest of what he says because Erik interrupts him.

“That’s where we’re going to find Shaw,” Erik says suddenly.

Alex asks, “How do you know?”

“Two super powers facing off, and he wants to start World War Three,” Charles answers. He keeps his eyes glued on the TV as he speaks. “He won’t leave anything to chance.”

“So much for diplomacy,” I mutter.

“I suggest you all get a good night’s sleep,” Erik tells us ominously.

During dinner an hour later, Raven sits back in her chair and pushes peas around on her plate with her fork. “It’s so depressing, thinking about what lengths people will go to. How they aren’t afraid to sacrifice each other. The world could end tomorrow.”

“It isn’t depressing if you think we will win,” Charles says, and for the first time I allow myself to wonder if that’s possible.

“We’ve earned a break,” Raven says. “A night out on the town.”

“I’m sorry, but I’m going to have to put my foot down,” Charles says. “I need you all sharp for tomorrow. We can celebrate after.”

“What if there is no after?” Raven mumbles.

Charles leans his elbows on the table and looks at Raven closely. “I promise that if we win tomorrow, I’ll take you all out dancing.” Sean gives a loud whoop of approval. The rest of us mutter an acceptance.

After we eat, I pass an inexplicably excited Hank in the foyer. “What’s up with you?”

“I did it,” he whispers. “I made the serum. I isolated the right marker in Raven’s DNA. The serum works like an anti-biotic, attacking the cells that cause our physical mutation. I’m going to give it to Raven tonight. So we can go out tomorrow without having to hide.”

I smile. “Congratulations, Hank.” He grins and dashes off to the lab. I remain in the empty foyer, feeling almost out of place. Until Charles finds me.

“Care for a drink?”

This time, I accept.

Charles takes me to a room similar to his stepfather’s man-cave. This one is smaller and in shades of green and gold. He lights a fire in the stone fireplace, fixes a simple Scotch for himself, and when he asks me what I want, I say, surprise me, because I don’t honestly care right now. He searches the bottles for a moment, chooses two, pours some brown liquids in a glass and adds squeezed lemon, and brings it over to where I sit in one of the armchairs by the fire.

“Hmm, I think I know what you made,” I say as I take the glass.

“I’d be fascinated if I didn’t know you could read my mind to find out.”

I smile and take a sip of the drink. Immediately I scrunch up my face and shiver. “It’s sour. Well, more sour than normal.”

“Maybe I added too much lemon.”

I swirl the glass and take another sip. We talk for a while, about simple, mundane things, and then he surprises me by saying, “I thought I’d never get the chance to have a drink with you.”

Before I can respond, Erik appears, saying loudly, “Well, isn’t this cozy.”

Ugh, he ruins everything.

“Erik,” Charles says pleasantly. “Come, have a drink.”

I focus on the brown liquid in my glass while Erik walks to the tiny bar, his eyes on me, and mixes up a martini. Charles brings up the address, and soon he and Erik are engrossed in a conversation I’m not a part of while they play a game of chess (at Erik’s request, the asshole). I lounge on an armchair and pretend to read a book.

Charles leans forward to move one of his bishops. “Cuba, Russia, America. Makes no difference. Shaw’s declared war on mankind. On all of us. He has to be stopped.” He gestures to the board, but Erik leans back in his chair.

“I’m not going to stop Shaw,” he says. “I’m going to kill him. Do you have it in you to allow that?” Charles stays quiet. Erik shoots a glance at me, and I bury my nose in my book. I wonder why he’s speaking to Charles with me in the room. “You’ve known all along why I was here, Charles. But things have changed. What started as a covert mission…tomorrow mankind will know that mutants exist. Shaw, us, they won’t differentiate. They’ll fear us. And that fear will turn to hatred.”

“Not if we stop a war,” Charles points out. “Not if we can prevent Shaw. Not if we risk our lives doing so.”

“Will they do the same for us?” Erik asks.

“We have it in us to be the better men,” Charles insists.

They were speaking calmly up until now. Erik retaliates with his voice raised and fire in his eyes. “We already are! We’re the next stage of human evolution, you said it yourself!”

“No!” Charles yells back, and after he’s calm, he says again, “No.”

“Are you really so naïve as to think that they won’t battle their own extinction? Or is it arrogance?”

“I’m sorry?”

Erik jeers. “After tomorrow, they’re going to turn on us. But you’re blind to it because you believe they’re all like Moira.”

“You believe they’re all like Shaw,” Charles counters calmly. “Listen to me very carefully, my friend. Killing Shaw will not bring you peace.”

Erik gets to his feet. “Peace was never an option.” His eyes meet mine and I understand why he spoke in front of me. He wanted me to know his plan, the truth of his intentions. But I won’t be so easily swayed.

After Erik leaves, Charles falls heavily into the armchair across from me and looks pitifully at his almost-empty Scotch.

“I never thought about that,” I say quietly.

“What?”

“That the world will know we exist after tomorrow. And because of Shaw we will look evil.” I run my fingers over the smooth cover of the book in my lap. George Orwell. _1984_. A strange idea of utopia. Will we even live to see the nineteen-eighties, utopia or not? “It’s so much more than just nuclear war. You think we will win, don’t you? We have incredible powers that humans could never dream of. We have the power to stop their silly war. The real battle will be between us and them, won’t it?”

“Yes,” Charles says. “But we don’t have to be against them.”

“I was worried about the wrong thing all this time. If we win, if we save the world…why would mankind hate us if we saved them?”

“Because people are afraid of what they don’t understand,” Charles says quietly. “And we are a new species that they don’t understand, that they can’t control. They will fear us whether we are good or bad. So, we go and do our best and hope that their fear isn’t so great that they can’t be reasonable.”

“How funny that if it didn’t matter, you would think to still do good, and Erik would think that you might as well do bad.”

“That’s what makes us different.”

I nod slowly. “Erik came to me. Yesterday, on the satellite.”

Charles looks up and sits straighter in his chair. “Did he?”

“He wanted to apologize to me for the other night. He said that anyone who is good enough for you and possesses the amount of power that I do is good enough for him.”

Charles closes his eyes and rests his head against the cushion of the high back of the chair. “It’s as I feared.”

“Do we stop him?” I ask. “From going rogue?”

“We can’t. All we can do is try to steer him down the right path.”

“That’s like trying to steer a bull,” I say. He smiles faintly. “How come you couldn’t see that in Erik’s mind?”

“That’s not really how it works up here,” he says, tapping his head. “I can’t get deeper into Erik’s mind if he doesn’t want me to. All the time, I sense the thoughts people are thinking _now_. Then, if I focus on someone, I have the ability to dig deeper, manipulate their thoughts, their memories, their actions. Freeze time, to an extent, by freezing everyone’s minds so I can get to who I need to.”

“Wow,” I say. I never tried to control anyone like that. I wonder if I could.

“It’s quite dangerous,” Charles says. “Mankind is right to fear us.”

“Can you imagine Erik with that kind of power?” I muse. “It would be…”

“Catastrophic,” Charles finishes for me. “I believe that our abilities are only as good as we are capable of.”

“Keeping the real power from the ones who wouldn’t be afraid to misuse it.” I stare at my lap. “Do you think that means I’d never go bad? Because I have such a strong gift?”

“We all have choices. But yes, I believe you are good.” After we sit in silence for a while, and Charles drains the last of his Scotch, he says, “Will you do me a favor, please?”

I know he wants the shield. In some strange way, having me momentarily block out all the voices allows him to regain control. I sense waves of stress from him, which is why he struggles to keep a hold on himself.

We move over to a small sofa. Charles lays across it with his head in my lap. I relax and shield off his mind from the thousands of voices in his head.

“Incredible,” he says with a sigh.

The fire crackles low, casting a golden glow over the dark room. Sitting there with Charles in this intimate way, where he completely trusts me with his mind, makes me realize that I don’t want to lose him. Any of them, for that matter, even Erik. But Charles the most. He means something to me. No, I think I’m starting to care for him.

Charles takes long, deep even breaths in through his nose and lets the air out in a steady stream from his mouth. I smell a faint hint of Scotch when he exhales. He becomes so relaxed I think he’s fallen asleep. But then he speaks.

“You’ve become a very interesting person to me because I never know what you’re thinking,” Charles says softly.

“Is it just the idea that you can’t read my mind whenever you want that intrigues you? Because there isn’t a whole lot up here to be impressed by,” I tell him just as softly.

“Nonsense,” Charles whispers.

“Really. I haven’t led a very interesting life.”

“But you think. You have dreams. You have aspirations.” Charles sits up and faces me, breaking our connection in the process. I drop my hands to my lap. “Don’t you?”

“I can allow myself to have them now,” I say quietly. “You saw into my head when you first met me. I’m sure understand why I wouldn’t let myself dream big.”

Charles brushes a few stray hairs from my face and tucks them behind my ear. A wave of goose bumps break out on my skin from his touch. “When this is all over, I would like to give you everything you want.”

“Why?” I ask in a voice barely above a whisper.

“Because I can,” he says simply. Then, he leans in ever so slightly to add, “And because you deserve it.”

I find myself daringly thinking _kiss me_ , even though I have my shield up and he can’t hear me. Even without that, he leans forward. Our lips touch, eyes close. We move closer, his hands find my waist and search along my back, I run my palms up his chest and around his neck. My hands grip his soft hair, his hands grip my jacket, and while I enjoyed our sweet, shy kiss the other day, I think I like this more passionate, heated one better.

We break apart, but he keeps his forehead on mine for a moment.

“It’s late,” he whispers, and I nod. He puts out the fire and we leave the room. The mansion is dark, quiet. We walk up the three flights of stairs arm in arm, and before we part ways in front of our doors, he kisses me on the cheek and says softly, “Good night.”

“Good night, Charles.”

Despite how peaceful I feel, sleep doesn’t come easy. Tomorrow, everything changes. Tomorrow, we fly to Cuba. We try to stop Shaw. We fight. And we may die.

And what happens if we win? Everything will still change. We will have to hide who we are. Hank worked so hard on that serum, but what good will it do if the world will know that mutants exist and can look like regular people? There could be mass hysteria as they target anyone they think might be a mutant. It will be the Salem Witch Trials all over again.

There’s no use worrying about it now. It’s inevitable. I sigh and roll over onto my side, and eventually drift off into a restless, dreamless sleep.


	6. One Hell of a Day

_October 26 th, 1962_

_Westchester County, New York; Siboney, Cuba_

A gentle shake of my shoulder rouses me from slumber. “It’s time,” Charles says. “Get dressed and meet us downstairs. Hank has something for us.”

Vaguely aware of my actions, I stumble out of bed. Use the bathroom. Wash my face. Comb my hair. Brush my teeth. Dress. Dark pants, dark green long-sleeve turtleneck, black leather jacket, same boots.

In the kitchen, there’s a small amount of food on the table. Some fruit, bagels, coffee. Less than our usual meal but even then, nobody has much of an appetite. We all pick at our plates as we wait for Hank.

Raven asks if they’re all going to go by their codenames today. Mystique, Havok, Banshee, and they previously named Charles Professor X and Erik Magneto.

Sean turns to me. “You need a name.”

“No, I’m all right,” I insist. Hank’s already dressing us up as superheroes. I don’t need a name to match.

“No, really. Let’s see…how about Professor H?” Sean suggests. The entire table stares at him with blank faces. “What? Charles is Professor X, and he’s a mind reader. She is, too. So, she can be Professor H.”

“Charles is Professor X because he’s an _actual_ professor,” Raven says.

Sean ignores her and continues on. “Oh! How about _The Mind Reader_.” He waves his hands in front of a dazed face.

I wince. “That’s terrible, Sean. Did it take you this long to come up with names for the others?”

“No,” Alex says.

“Well, I wanted Mystique, but Raven took that…” Sean scowls at Raven.

“How about _The Nuclear Crusader_ ,” Alex suggests with a smirk.

“Ugh, nothing with ‘The’,” I tell him. “But really, I’m okay just being Leah.”

Sean taps his lip. “I know! _Psiconicoid!”_

“No!” we all shout in union.

“Neuron-nullifier!”

“Shut up, Sean!”

Hank never comes.

“Did you check his room?” Moira asks Charles.

“Yes, he wasn’t there. I assumed he was in the lab.” Charles closes his eyes and presses his fingers to his temple. After a quick moment, he says, “Come on, everyone.”

Chairs scrape as they are pushed back, and we rise and head to the back wing, towards Hank’s lab. I walk behind everyone with Raven. “Did you talk to Hank last night?”

“Yes,” Raven says, and I’ve never seen her look so sad. I thought she’d be happy. With the serum, she wouldn’t have to hide anymore. Or was she still on the fence about that? “He finished the serum. But I thought about what you said, so I told Hank, why should we hide? Charles is right. We may win today. We’ve achieved so much this past week, and there’s so much we _will_ achieve.”

“So, what happened?”

Raven shifts herself into blue Mystique. “I told Hank that society should aspire to be more like us. Mutant and proud. He said that even if we save the world, mutants will never be accepted into society.” I think her eyes well with tears but it’s hard to tell with the bold yellow tint. “He said his feet and my natural blue form will never be deemed beautiful.”

“Raven, I’m sorry,” I say. Damn, I thought Erik was bad. Hank’s a jerk. “Want me to kick his ass for you?”

She chokes out a laugh through her tears, which she hastily wipes from her eyes. “No, it’s fine. He finds the _other_ me attractive, that’s just what he prefers. But it’s not what I’m looking for. There’s someone else who thinks I’m beautiful like this. I slept with Erik last night.”

“ _What?_ ” My voice catches in my throat.

“ _Shh_.” Without any more information, Raven follows the others into Hanks lab. After regaining my composure, I do as well.

Hank’s lab is a mess. Everything is thrashed. Broken glass, lab equipment. Shredded papers. Splintered tables. The only thing that remains intact is a silver trunk, marked with an X in black tape, at the far end of the room. We all crowd around it, and Charles lifts the lid.

Inside the trunk are six beautiful yellow and blue jumpsuits of thick material. Each design is slightly different – Alex’s plate and Sean’s wings stand out the most – but in general, they have blue legs and arms and a yellow chest and back. Each has a simple black belt and harness. There’s a single dark gray suit as well. A slender one, definitely made for a woman. I look to my right. Moira. Is Hank singling her out?

“Hank _has_ been busy,” Erik says as he carefully pokes one of the suits.

“Do we really have to wear these?” Sean asks.

Charles puts his hands in his pants pockets and observes the suits. “As none of us mutated to endure extreme G-force or being riddled by bullets, I suggest we suit up.”

Each of us grabs our designated suit and finds a room on the first floor to change into. I struggle to get into the thick, tight material. The black boots come up to my calves, the black gloves up to my forearm. I run the zipper from my waist to just above my breasts, clip the belt on. I’d leave my hair down but it’s long and would get in the way. I tie it up in a high ponytail and observe myself in the bathroom mirror. I look sexy. Well done, Hank.

The seven of us pile uncomfortably into Moira’s Cadillac and drive a half-hour to a private hangar where a beautiful black stealth jet waits, with the fluorescent lights glistening on the hull. There was a note pinned to Hank’s lab door saying to meet him here, but as we line up in the hangar in front of the jet (to which Raven, Alex, Sean and I “Ooh!” and “Ahh!” at), Hank’s still nowhere in sight.

“Where’s Hank?” Raven finally asks. Everyone looks around. The only thing in the hangar is the jet and the seven of us.

“I’m here,” Hank’s voice says. A shape forms in the opening of the hangar and moves toward us, swathed in shadows of the jet. The outlines of its arms and head are large and blurry. I squint in the dark until the figure emerges into the light.

It’s Hank. And he’s blue. But not just blue, big and furry and blue. All of his features changed and slightly enlarged, covering him from head to toe in blue fur. He still wears his glasses over his blue face, where the fur is short and fine. He must not have anticipated the change, because his suit is chopped apart. The arms are missing and so is most of the middle in order to accommodate his new size.

“Hank?” Charles says curiously.

“It didn’t attack the cells. It enhanced them. The serum didn’t work.” Hank’s voice is accompanied by a slight growl.

Raven steps forward. She reaches out and touches Hank’s cheek gently. “Yes, it did, Hank. Don’t you see? This is who you were meant to be. This is you. No more hiding.” Hank lowers his head in shame.

I kind of like it. Erik must, too, because he says lightly, “Never looked better, man.” And Hank, who has always been self-conscious of his looks, lets out an earsplitting growl and takes a clawed hand and latches onto Erik’s throat. He effortlessly lifts him off the ground. Erik grips at Hank’s hands – claws, paws, I don’t know – as he gasps for air, his toes dangling inches above the ground.

“Hank?” Charles says warily.

“Don’t mock me!” Hank snarls at Erik.

“Hank, put him down immediately!” Charles orders falteringly, then adds, “Please? Hank? Hank!”

Finally, Hank releases Erik and he crumples to the ground. As he rubs his neck, Erik glares up at Hank and says in a raspy voice, “I wasn’t!”

Moira, Sean and I stand there, a little taken aback and maybe slightly frightened, but Alex has a gleeful smile on his face.

“Even I gotta admit, you look pretty bad-ass. I think I’ve got a new name for you.” Hank whips his head around, a low growl escaping his throat, as Alex says proudly, “Beast.” Since Alex still stands, Hank approves.

“Are you sure you can fly this thing?” Sean asks, with his face raised to the jet but his eyes darting to Hank.

“Of course I can,” Hank says. “I designed it.”

“It’s amazing, Hank,” I say.

A little rumble starts in the back of Hank’s throat that I associate with a purr. He leads us into the jet and takes the single pilot’s seat and ignites the engine. The jet roars to life and the cabin fills with a dull whirring sound.

There’s twelve seats altogether, including Hank’s and a station for the radio and radar in which Moira engages. I sit across from Charles in the seats closest to Hank. The space between the rows is so narrow I could raise my foot and touch my toe to his seat.

Raven smiles at me as the plane takes off; she’s excited. But when the jet is level and we could just be parked on the ground again for all we know, the jet is so smooth, nervousness creeps onto her face. I look to her, then at Alex, then at Sean, who sits on my right. They’re all too young for this. _We’re_ all too young, honestly.

I think Alex said he was twenty. Before Charles and Erik found him, he got himself thrown in jail after he discovered his power. He requested solitary confinement so he wouldn’t hurt anyone. He shouldn’t have to hide or be afraid of his power. Now he’s sacrificing the rest of his life.

And Sean, happy, carefree Sean that I always thought was high but just really enjoys life, could have that simple, lovely mind taken away from him. Someone who is only nineteen doesn’t deserve that. And Raven. The girl of many faces, who looks old when she is ‘human’ looks young and scared when she is Mystique. I thought she was young but she’s my age, and I don’t have the tenacity she does. If she were to stare you down with those yellow eyes surrounded by flaming red-orange hair and blue scaly skin, she’d be terrifying. She should know that. How much she can do with just a look, and then how much she can do with her _looks_.

Then I glance down at Erik, who looks completely ready for this fight. So different from the others. So full of the revenge that he’s been waiting to serve since he was a teenager. And now he’s got the opportunity to do it.

Moira is all business. I’m not sure if she’s gone into combat before but she’s completed missions before. This is just another mission to her.

We all chose to do this. Chose to fight. And we have to succeed.

It takes about an hour to fly south, to the most southeastern bay in Cuba. The water is so blue here, the greens of the nearby island so bold. There’s a large, crescent shaped lagoon on the shore, and before it, in the wide open ocean, are naval ships of immense size facing off. Miles separate them as they creep slowly across that large space, where a single ship floats between them.

“Looks pretty messy out there,” Hank calls over his shoulder.

Charles nods to me and I lower my shield. _I’m going to search that lone ship for anyone on board. Will you scan the U.S. and Soviet officials? Get a read on the situation?_

 _Sure_ , I say, and we grin as we both touch our fingers to our temples and concentrate.

I send my mind out into the world. It escapes through the windshield and crevices in the plane that aren’t metal and rejoins as a solid form in the sky. I feel Charles’s presence as he passes. I struggle with the distance. I’ve never read people at this range before, and it becomes especially difficult when they are moving targets and I’m a moving target. I open one eye and find Charles’s face perfectly calm.

I just reach the captain of the Soviet ship when Charles says, with his voice raised to be heard above the whirring of the jet, “The crew of the Aral Sea are all dead. Shaw’s been there. His teleporter remains.”

The Aral Sea must be that lone ship. Russian. I quickly search out the U.S. captain.

“He’s still there,” Erik says. “Somewhere.”

“He’s set the ship on course for the embargo line,” Charles informs us.

Moira leans back in her seat. “If that ship crosses the line, our boys are going to blow it up, and the war begins.”

Charles’s eyes scan the faces in the jet. “Unless they’re _not_ our boys.” He asks me for an update.

“Both sides are ready to fire,” I say. “No – wait. The Russians have signaled the cargo ship to turn around.” Their faces brighten. “God, the U.S. thinks it’s a ruse. Charles, help me, I’m not used to holding this distance.” I feel Charles in my head, reinforcing me. That’s when I see the orders of the U.S. solidify. “The U.S. is standing by to fire, right now. They’re going to fire, Charles! They’re going to blow up the ship!”

I scramble frantically in my mind, wondering how I could possibly calm down enough to attempt to contain any missiles that would head straight for the Aral Sea. This is exactly what I mentioned the other day – the bomb to start another world war. And it was supposed to be my overconfident ass that stopped it.

My body is overcome with a wave of tranquility from Charles. “Calm down,” he says.

Charles closes his eyes and retreats back into his mind. His hand trembles against his temple, his face twists into a grimace, and suddenly Hank gives out a loud growl that echoes through the jet as he swerves hard to the left, just in time for a missile painted with a bright red Soviet symbol to streak past the window. As we spin through the sky we brace ourselves in our seats, and I think Sean screams. Then comes a loud explosion, and I realize Charles set off a Russian missile to blow up their own cargo ship. And he can’t control metal, so he must have manipulated one of the crew to do so. Very impressive.

When the jet stops spiraling, Hank growls, “Little warning next time, Professor.”

“Sorry about that.” Charles observes the rest of us. “You all right?”

“Yeah,” I say, and a few others nod as well. Sean looks green.

“That was inspired, Charles,” Moira says appreciatively.

“Thank you very much. But I still can’t locate Shaw.” Charles looks frustrated. When our eyes meet, I shake my head. The U.S. Navies have never seen him before. The Soviet commander has, but not for a week.

“He’s down there. We need to find him, now!” Erik shouts.

“Hank?” Charles asks.

Hank looks over his shoulder. “Is there anything unusual on the radar or scanners?”

That’s for Moira. She just shakes her head. “No. Nothing.”

“Well, then he must be under water. And obviously, we don’t have sonar.” Hank lets out a growl of annoyance.

Then Sean speaks up for the first time the entire flight. “Yes, we do!”

Charles must understand because he repeats, “Yes, we do!” And I think for a minute. Can Sean detect his own supersonic screeching? Sean and Charles quickly unbuckle themselves and make their way to the back of the jet. They have to hop and jump and hold onto metal posts in the ceiling, because Hank has the jet turned in an arc.

“Hank! Level the bloody plane!” Charles shouts.

Hank does so, and that’s when Erik gets out of his seat and walks over to Charles and Sean. I don’t know how he can help – unless he wants to shove Sean out of the plane – and I think he’s just being nosy when Sean looks up and points threateningly at Erik.

“Whoa! You back right off!” he yells.

Erik smirks, holding up his hands, and takes a few careful steps backwards. I guess Sean still hasn’t forgiven him for pushing him off the satellite.

Sean gets his grip on one of the posts, swings out and cups a hand to his mouth to shout, “Beast! Open the bomb bay doors!”

Hank obliges, and soon the cabin fills with the droning of the motor as the belly of the plane swings open. An incredible force of air whooshes into the jet, stinging my eyes. Charles has to scream so Sean will hear him.

“Remember! This is a muscle! You control it!” Charles presses a gloved hand to Sean’s throat, to indicate Sean’s ability, and then he taps his own head. “You’ll be in here the entire time! We’ll see you soon!” Sean nods and jiggles his arms by his sides. “On my mark! Three! Two! One! Go!”

Without hesitation, Sean gives out a loud, “Whooo!” as he leaps feet first out of the jet. The metallic screech of his scream pierces the air, and then through the opening in the plane I see him circle back and do a fantastic swan dive in to the water.

Moira holds a large headset to hear ear and speaks into a microphone. “Alert the fleet, they may want to take their cans off.”

Charles stays by the doors, holding on to a post, with his fingers to his temple and his face set in concentration. “Banshee has got a location on Shaw.” He looks at Erik. “Are you ready for this?”

Erik smirks. “Let’s find out.”

Hank circles over both sides of the naval ships, but now that he has somewhere to target he dips the nose of the jet down and hovers somewhere over open water and releases the landing gear. As the mechanism descends, Erik climbs down them and stands on the wheel. Charles looks back at me and says, “I’m going to help Erik. I need you to keep an eye on things out there.” I nod and expand my mind.

Because my mind is open, I hear Charles tell Erik, _Remember, the point between rage and serenity_ _…_ Out in the ocean, I get a whole lot of nothing. The U.S. works through their shock that the Soviets blew up their own cargo ship. The Soviets are confused, and the commander throws off waves of anger and relief towards the man that Charles manipulated to set off the missile. I guess we’re not the only ones who want to avoid a war.

I sense a humongous mass of metal rising from the depths of the sea. I look down out of the doors and see Erik’s face red and straining, one hand on the landing gear, one hand outstretched towards the water. Suddenly, the tail end of a submarine breaches the surface. I direct my mind towards it, penetrating through the portal windows looking for Shaw, and end up sensing a whirlwind of a mind making its way to the top hatch of the submarine.

“Charles!” I shout. “Someone’s coming!”

“Can you stop him?” Charles shouts back.

“I can’t control them like you do!” For once I wish I was able to shock Charles, so I’d take on his mental capabilities. I wonder if I can manipulate metal at this distance. I haven’t tried to develop that power. But if I succeed, I can keep the hatch closed. I reach out for the metal of the hatch, of the submarine, anything that isn’t the jet, but there’s too much distance. Damn.

A black mass of hair emerges from the top of the submarine, followed by a body in a pristine purple tuxedo. What the hell? The young man holds onto the side railing of the tiny deck with one hand and has his other palm-up. A swirling gust of wind generates on his palm and gets wider and higher until it’s a full-blown tornado.

“Charles, I can’t stop him!” I scream. But it’s too late. That tornado goes flying towards the jet. The impact jolts my body and my mind retracts painfully. The jet spins uncontrollably. Warning alarms add to the chaos in out of sync noise, Raven and Alex scream in fright, Hank growls as he struggles to right the plane but it’s bent in a sort of boomerang shape and won’t fly right, and Charles keeps yelling for Erik to take his hand but Erik still has his grasp on the submarine as the jet goes whirling towards the crescent shaped lagoon.

“Hang on, guys! It’s gonna get bumpy!” Hank roars.

We’re going to crash. All of Erik’s focus is on the submarine, and I don’t have the strength to control the metal we’re in. I’ve got about as much capability to land Hank’s pilot’s seat safely. So, I close my eyes hang on for dear life.

Down, down, down, the plane spins, hurtling towards the beach. My eyes pop open when I remember that Charles and Erik aren’t in their seats. Erik is okay, holding on to the landing gear (he’s okay, not safe), but Charles hangs out of the bomb bay doors reaching for Erik. Damn him!

I throw off my belt harness and stagger uneasily to the back of the plane and tug on Charles’s shoulder. Now that I’m close to the opening, I see we’re not far from the ground. My heart races and the wind stings my ears and eyes.

“Charles!” I scream.

“Erik, come on!” Charles shouts.

Erik’s face is beet red from dragging along the submarine when he looks at me. I haven’t put my shield all the way up, and I can feel sensations from him. I allow them to enter. He suggests how to protect Charles, because we’re going to reach impact in about five seconds.

Harnessing all the metal control I have in me, I fling myself at Charles and manage to pin him to the bottom of the plane. With my hands and toes braced against the metal, I dig into it as if digging through sand, finding footholds, molding the metal around them, quickly form something to clamp my hands in.

I become a safety net for Charles. He holds on to me and we both add to the screams of everyone in the jet as a boom resonates through the air and half a second later the plane hits the ground and it rolls, falling to pieces as it does.

When the plane comes to a stop it’s upside down. Everyone’s heads dangle as they struggle out of their harnesses, but that means Charles and I are stuck to the ceiling now and I can’t support his weight anymore. I planned to let him down slowly but I end up losing my grip and we fall in a heap on the floor.

“Are you all right?” he asks me.

“Peachy,” I groan.

“Thank you,” he says as he helps me up. He then goes to check on the others.

I thought the loud boom might have been the jet engine exploding, but it turns out it was the submarine colliding with the beach and trampling palm trees, crushing them flat as it rolled to a stop. I look out of the broken hull of the plane and see the giant mess we’ve made of the beach.

Erik! He’s still out there, somewhere. He wasn’t even in the plane when it landed. I don’t want to go out too far without back-up because we have an enemy sub in our midst, so I search with my mind. Erik is a few yards away, getting to his feet, dusting sand off him. I sigh in relief. He’s alive.

“I read the teleporter – Azazel’s – mind,” Charles says as he helps Moira up. “Shaw is drawing all of the power out of the sub. He’s turning himself into some sort of nuclear bomb.”

“We’ve got no time,” Moira says with a groan. She’s bleeding from her forehead. “The Geiger count is going out of control.”

Charles flies into commander-mode. “All right, this is what we’re going to do. Moira, get on the radio and tell them to clear both fleets _immediately_.” She nods and starts to tell anyone on the radio that Shaw’s going to try to detonate some sort of bomb.

“I’m going in,” Erik says through gritted teeth, his eyes glued to the submarine.

“Beast, Havok, back him up,” Charles orders. “Erik, I can guide you through once you’re in, but I need you to shut down whatever it is that’s blocking me. Then we just hope to god it’s not too late to stop him.”

Erik nods once. “Got it.”

“Good luck.” Charles notices his sister following the boys. “Raven, stop!”

“I’m going to help them,” she says.

“We don’t have time for this. If anything comes in that entrance, you’re taking care of it, yes?”

Raven clenches and unclenches her fists. “Fine.”

“What about me?” I ask.

Charles hesitates before saying, “Stand by with me. If I can’t control Shaw, your idea might just come in handy.” I better calm down, then.

I crouch by an opening in the broken hull with Charles, sort of hidden by dangling wires and debris. We watch Erik, Hank, and Alex face off against three of Shaw’s crew. Purple Tuxedo Tornado, a red-skinned man that looks like the devil with a pointed tail to match (how fitting, for Azazel), and a girl that looks like a bug, complete with wings fluttering at top speed. That must be Angel, the recruit that betrayed Charles and the others.

Erik, Hank and Alex are blocked from view by the jet, but suddenly a plasma beam goes flying at Shaw’s small army. Angel takes off, Azazel vanishes in a wisp of red and black smoke, leaving Purple Tuxedo to take the brunt of the force to his chest. He slams into the side of the submarine, then falls to the sand with tendrils of smoke smoldering from his body.

I rush to the other side of the plane in time to see Azazel appear behind Alex and Hank. He grabs Hank by the throat, whips his tail around Alex’s neck, and they all vanish. Behind my worry for Hank and Alex, I think, _I’ve got to get my hands on that teleporter_. Looking like a Hot Tamale isn’t something on my bucket list, but his power could be incredibly useful. Right now, though, I see Hank, Alex and Azazel appear in the sky, miles above a U.S. ship.

Erik takes off towards the submarine now that he’s got a clear path. I rush back to my position next to Charles just as Erik’s outstretched hand whips off a huge chunk of the side of the sub. The crumpled metal falls right on top of the lifeless Purple Tuxedo.

Charles’s heavy breathing slows and he holds his finger to his temple. He guides Erik now. I look at the submarine and think – what blocks our powers? Metal. I may be able to find the spot that Charles can’t get through quicker than Erik and somehow manipulate a small break, like I had in the bunker, so we can reach Shaw. I search out with my mind, following Charles’s aura. He throws me this look until he figures out what I want to do, and then he nods for me to go ahead.

Now that our minds cross, I hear Charles talking to Erik.

_Erik, make for the middle of the vessel. That’s the point my mind can’t penetrate. We have to assume that that’s where Shaw is._

I feel Erik make his way through the disaster of a submarine and push beyond him. I come to the place Charles’s mind is trapped at, circling what appears to be a room surrounded by thick metal. I look for an opening, something to manipulate, but with the distance, I can only just barely feel the molecules of the metal.

 _That’s the nuclear reactor_ , Charles tells Erik. _Disable it._

“Charles, I can’t break through the room,” I say out loud. “Not from this far. I need to get closer.”

Charles shakes his head, keeping contact with his hand to his temple. “No. Not yet. Let Erik try first.”

I grit my teeth and focus again, wondering why I didn’t spend more time developing the metal power while we trained. Maybe I didn’t like the association with Erik, but I wish I had put my petty attitude aside so that right now we’d have an advantage on Shaw.

 _Erik, you’re there_ , Charles says. _You’ve reached the void_.

_He’s not here, Charles. Shaw’s not here! He’s left the sub._

_What? He’s got to be there! He has to be! There’s nowhere else he can be! Keep looking!_

_And I’m telling you he’s not! There’s no one here, goddammit!_

_Charles, will you two stop bickering for a moment?_ I show him how the block he reached forms into a metal room. Just as Charles is about to tell Erik to look for some sort of secret door, there is a new voice, and it comes into my head via Charles’s mind.

“Erik, what a pleasant surprise.” I invade Erik’s mind for a moment to see through his eyes a man standing calmly in front of a small passage, where behind him his distorted image reflects back a hundred times. The man, ironically, doesn’t look menacing at all in his dark blue captain’s outfit. He wears a silly steel helmet that comes in a window’s peak far over his eyes and brushes his shoulders.

In the moment I allowed myself into Erik’s head uninvited with the sole intention of just seeing Shaw, I unwittingly receive suppressed memories making their way to the front of Erik’s mind. And as the dark images slide in the front of my brain like a projection, tears well up in my eyes.

It all happens in the span of a few seconds. Everything coated by darkness, by pain. A boy, a teenager, corralled through muddy gated streets in the rain with hundreds of other people. The moment of fright as he is parted from his mother and father by Nazi guards and separated from them by large gates. The anguish, the helplessness, as he tries to get back to them. The rage building as the Nazi guards prevent him from that. Then that rage tunneled through his body, his arms, his hands, his fingers, as his outstretched hands channel his power at the huge metal gates, bending them, twisting them, crushing them down.

Then the boy is in an office. Behind the desk sits a man that looks incredibly like Shaw, just slightly younger. Hank was right – our mutant genes do keep us young. The man asks the boy to move a silver coin on the desk, and now that the boy is calm, he can’t. Then, two Nazi guards drag in the boy’s mother. He’s scared, he’s frightened, he knows that he won’t be able to move the coin, especially now with the pressure of his mother down range of Shaw’s – Schmidt’s – gun. Because he has an ultimatum: move the coin, or his mother gets shot.

The gun goes off, his mother falls to the floor, dead. The fear is replaced by wrath and the boy lifts his hands to the sky with a yell he feels is furious as he destroys all the metal in the office, including the helmets of the guards. The helmets contract and crush their skulls – Erik’s first kills. And Schmidt is proud.

The boy grows. Each day he grows older he grows more angry, more resentful, at the man who captured him and kept him prisoner in the concentration camps, abusing him for his power, torturing him for his amusement. Until one day the war ends and the boy escapes. Only to come back years later, more powerful, in search of the man who made his youth hell. And he is no stranger to killing. Death follows him wherever he goes, mercilessly murdering men for information that will lead him to the man he considers his creator, and he Frankenstein’s monster.

 _Erik? Erik?_ Charles calls, but Erik is preoccupied. Charles and I exchange worried glances. “He’s gone! He’s gone into the void! I can’t communicate with him there!”

“Then I need to go out there,” I say. “I can get through if I get near it. I just can’t control metal as well as Erik can.”

“You control metal, too?” Moira asks suddenly. I forgot she’s still here with us.

“Yes,” I say, and don’t offer further explanation. I don’t owe her one. I plead with Charles with my eyes.

“Okay,” he says softly, reluctantly.

I take off out into the wide-open beach littered with flattened palm trees and broken pieces of the jet and submarine. It’s warm out for being it’s October, but then I remember we’re in Cuba. No bathing suits and fruity cocktails with tiny umbrellas for me. My first time out of the United States and it’s not to vacation, it’s to fight.

I make it to the outside of the submarine and stop with my back to the hot metal that was once cool from the ocean water to cast my senses, to make sure the submarine is clear. I don’t know who else may be on board. I look back at the jet one last time and see Alex and Sean crash land on the beach. Alex’s chest is bare – his metal plate is missing – and Sean’s arms, or the wings, are smoking. Where’s Hank?

 _Leah! Wait! He’s back!_ Charles tells me.

I push my mind forward and find that Charles is right. Something happened in that room and now there’s a breach in the metal.

_Erik! Whatever you’re doing, keep doing it! It’s starting to work!_

I feel the aura of the room, hear their voices. I don’t go closer yet. My job was to break through the room. That’s done. I need to figure out what else I can do. Like assess how much power Shaw’s accumulated so I know what I’m working with. I expand my mind to the metal room, connecting with Charles once more.

“Why fight for a doomed race who will hunt us down as soon as they realize their reign is coming to an end?” Shaw says.

Erik punches Shaw, and I feel the reverberations of the punch in the air. Shaw’s body vibrates with power.

“Everything I did, I did for you,” Shaw continues. “To unlock your power. To make you embrace it.” With one touch, Erik is thrown back against a mirror coating the metal walls and it shatters. “You’ve come a long way from bending gates. I’m so proud of you.”

Erik stands up and swings his arms around in an arc. As they fall back to his sides, pieces of the metal wall break off and encase Shaw in a cage.

 _It’s working!_ Charles tells Erik. _But I can’t yet touch his mind._

 _It’s the helmet, Charles!_ I say. _Erik, get the helmet!_

Shaw moves forward through the metal trap like he’s walking through a field of flowers. There’s so much energy radiating within him. I need to absorb it and send it off into the atmosphere.

“Think of how much further you could go, together,” Shaw tells Erik amiably. “I don’t want to hurt you, Erik. I never did. I want to help you. This is our time. Our age. We are the future of the human race. You and me, son. This world could be ours.” He pushes the metal back and pins Erik to the wall with it.

“Everything you did made me stronger,” Erik says as he gasps for air. “Made me the weapon I am today. It’s the truth. I’ve known it all along. You are my creator.” There’s a pause, where Erik just stares at Shaw, and then my mind pushes back with such energy that I fall to my knees. Erik removed Shaw’s helmet.

 _Now, Charles!_ Erik cries.

Charles freezes Shaw. I feel Charles’s struggle as he works to contain all of that energy. I fortify the connection with Erik, so I can still see what’s going on, as I notice Hank and Azazel appear on the beach not a hundred feet from where I am. But then, Shaw is there too. What the hell?

“Stop, Azazel,” Shaw orders the red devil. Azazel cocks his head to the side, staring at Shaw, and then teleports behind Hank. But Hank’s had a moment to prepare, and with all his new strength a simple blow to Azazel’s chest sends him to the ground. Hank nods knowingly to Shaw, who then forms into Mystique.

I think again for a moment about the teleporter’s power. He’s so close, too…if I can just make it…across the warm sand...remove my glove…

“Leah, what are you doing?” Hank yells.

My fingers are inches from Azazel’s skin. I push forward, make contact, wait for the shock, and then run back to the inside of the jet as Moira says, “Charles, are you okay?”

“Moira, be quiet, I can only control this man for so long,” Charles says in a strained voice. He sweats bad. His hair is plastered to his forehead and his jaw is clenched. It’s taking a lot out of him to hold Shaw still. I connect with his mind and try to offer any form of reinforcement I can, like he did with me earlier.

Then Erik’s voice comes in my head, accompanied with the resolute decision to end Shaw’s life: _Sorry, Charles._

_Erik, please! Be the better man! You have it–_

_It’s not that I don’t trust you_ _…_

_Erik! Erik, stop. There will be no turning back. Killing Shaw–_ “He’s put the helmet on.” Charles yells in frustration and lashes out at the side of the plane with his fist.

“So, what are we going to do?”

“Wait, he’s saying something to Shaw. I hear it in Shaw’s mind.”

Through Shaw’s thoughts I hear Erik tell him, _If you’re in there, I’d like you to know that I agree with every word you said. We are the future. But unfortunately, you killed my mother. This is what we’re going to do. I’m going to count to three. And I’m going to move the coin._ Oh, god. That’s what Shaw said to Erik when they first met. After all these years, Erik kept that silver coin as a memento to the anguish he suffered that day.

“No! Please, Erik! No!” Charles begs out loud now, desperately, because he knows that whether he speaks or thinks, there’s no stopping Erik. He had one chance to control Erik’s mind and he didn’t take it, because he wanted to be the better man. And now Erik is going to kill Shaw and all that energy will burst, and Erik will get caught in the crossfire.

_One._

“Charles?” Moira says.

“Moira, please, stop talking,” Charles orders her. “Leah, I need you to stop the coin.”

“And then what, Charles? Erik will still find a way to kill Shaw, just not in the significant way that he’s doing right now!”

_Two._

“I don’t care! Move the coin!”

“Charles, I can stop the coin or I can stop the nuclear bomb inside Shaw, because one way or another Shaw is going to die and when he dies all of that energy is going to kill Erik _and_ us!”

_Three._

We grow quiet. Being connected with Charles’s mind and Shaw’s allows me to feel this pain that Charles is suddenly overcome with. As the coin slowly moves through Shaw’s forehead, Charles screams out in pain; he feels everything Shaw feels as the metal penetrates his skin, his skull, his brain. But he controls Shaw, he’s literally one with him. I am on the outside, and I need to contain the energy that’s going to rupture at any moment.

I should have never come back to the jet. I should have stayed as close to the center of the submarine as I could. I got sidetracked by my need for a cool – albeit useful – power, and found myself back here.

No, this is no time to feel sorry for myself. I have to protect everyone. It’s up to me.

I calm myself. Find that serenity Charles instructed Erik about. Serenity that involves being back at the mansion with Charles, with Raven and Alex and Sean and Hank and maybe Moira and even Erik, with being happy for the first time in my life, and I vow that I will not let Shaw take that away from me.

I step out in front of the broken jet, spread my arms wide, and with a hard yell cast out my force field into the air, through the submarine, into the room where Erik and Shaw are. The energy slowly seeps out of Shaw’s body. As if in slow motion, it inches its way towards Erik, contravening. I quickly encase it in my force field and then think, now what? There’s some energy outside of Shaw but more than the majority of it is still inside him. Do I wait for it to leave his body? Form a tight seal and wait for it to implode on him and then dissipate the energy into space?

While I’ve controlled the energy around Shaw, I find that it moves toward me. That’s weird. I’m not moving it. Why is it in motion?

Like the sound of nails on a chalkboard amplified a thousand times over, the submarine walls tear apart and Shaw’s corpse, suspended by a metal stake through his body, floats out into the air, closely followed by Erik, who floats suspended by nothing. Then I see the metal helmet on his head, the one that Shaw was wearing earlier, and notice how it seems to fit him perfectly. What a match.

“Today, our fighting stops!” Erik’s voice booms out as he lands gracefully on his feet. Shaw’s body falls to the ground and it’s now or never. With my force field containing the energy, I add branches of telekinetic energy that will send Shaw into space. I don’t know if I have the range, though. Then Hank’s words echo in my mind: “ _The blast radius can be up to three kilometers in a one megaton airburst_.”

Well, I don’t know what a one megaton airburst is, but I’m sure it’s pretty big. I may not have to get Shaw all the way off the planet. Just way higher than three kilometers. Here goes. Shaw’s body shoots up like a rocket. Inside the force field, a gold energy accumulates. Perfect timing.

“Take off your blinders, brothers and sisters. The–”

Erik’s speech is interrupted as Shaw’s nuclear body explodes high above us with a thunderous _boom_. I release my mind and fall to the sandy beach, gasping, and feel a little bit proud of myself. Erik just looks pissed that I disturbed him.

“The real enemy is out there!” Erik continues as he advances down the beach, pointing at the many naval ships, both U.S. and Soviet Union alike, that are now directed towards the lagoon. Alex and Sean, from the right, gather closer. Hank and Raven, from the left, go to them. Azazel and Angel manage to appear as well, to listen to Erik. “I feel their guns moving in the water. Their metal, targeting us. Americans. Soviets. _Humans_. United in their fear of the unknown. The Neanderthal is running scared, my fellow mutants!”

Charles and Moira emerge from the wreckage of the jet. Charles clutches his head and he looks pale and sick.

“Go ahead, Charles,” Erik says when he notices his friend. “Tell me I’m wrong.”

Charles squints out at the ships and touches his temple. After a moment, he nods once to us, once to Moira, and Moira takes off back to the jet. I hear her on the radio, frantically telling anyone who will listen that the beach is secure and not to fire, but no one is listening.

That’s when a hundred cannons fire at once. With tails of white smoke, missiles soar toward the beach. A feeling of powerlessness fills my stomach and sends bile into my throat as I get up and go to Charles’s side. I can stop ten, maybe fifteen missiles. But not all of them. I raise both my hands shakily, ready my mind, but Erik is one step ahead of me. He easily lifts one hand and freezes all of the missiles in the sky.

Relief. I’m overwhelmed with relief. The missiles won’t blow unless they have a target, and right now they are suspended in midair. All Erik has to do is find a place to put them, safe from harm.

Erik has other ideas, though. Slowly, in unison, every single missile flips in a one-eighty arc and now targets the naval ships.

“Erik, you said yourself, we’re the better men!” Charles shouts. “This is the time to prove it. There are thousands of men on those ships. Good, honest, innocent men! They’re just following orders!”

Erik’s entire body tenses as he slowly turns to face Charles, and I don’t need to read his mind to see the pain in his eyes, the realization that Charles has sympathy for anything and everything. Charles can forgive and see good in everyone. The soldiers that were about to blow us up. The establishment that tried to wipe out Erik’s people, his Jewish legacy. Charles is blinded by hope, even as we stand here on the beach at the mercy of the ships in the bay, but Erik will never stop seeing monsters.

“I’ve been at the mercy of men just _following orders_ ,” Erik says through gritted teeth. “Never again!” And with that he releases the missiles on their new path.

“No!” I scream.

Charles lunges forward and tackles Erik to the ground. “Erik, release them!” They wrestle on the beach, sending sand flying everywhere. Even with Erik occupied he still manages to control the missiles.

“I don’t want to hurt you!” Erik grunts as Charles hits him in the stomach. “Don’t make me!” Alex, Sean and Hank advance on them, but before they get more than a few steps in Erik thrusts his fist in their direction. “STAND BACK!” he roars, and the boys go flying by the metal in their suits.

I do the one thing I’m capable of. I extend my arms, reach out with my senses, and search for the metal of the missiles. I can’t control them all at once so I focus on the ones that will reach the ships first. It’s slow work, but one by one, I send the bombs crashing into one another so they explode in midair, away from harm.

“Leah!” Erik shouts. “That’s enough!” I feel the silver hooks on my uniform pull my shoulders toward the sand. My knees buckle with the force of Erik dragging me down. I struggle to keep my composure, to keep my arms outstretched and my mind on the missiles. “STOP!” Erik sends me to my back and I land, hard, on the sand, gasping for the air that was crushed out of my lungs. I turn my head in time to see Erik punch Charles in the jaw and jump to his feet. He lost some control of the missiles and he works to right their path. Charles seems to struggle with the pain of being hit. Too much has gone on in his head. Guiding Erik for the extended length of time, controlling Shaw, now the physical damage to his face. He rolls onto his stomach and slowly gets up.

A gunshot echoes in the air. Then another, this one followed by the clang of metal as it reverberates off of Erik’s helmet. I gasp and look around until I see Moira emerge from the jet, her gun raised at Erik. Idiot! She now shoots willingly, one right after the other, and each time Erik easily waves his hand and the bullets change their trajectory, avoiding him.

My vision seems to slow to a crawl as I struggle to take in what happens next. A few yards to my right, Charles tries to get to his feet. He faces away from me, away from Erik, as Erik deflects Moira’s bullets. Charles straightens up, but his back continues to stretch until it contorts into an arch and then he screams, screams in pain worse than when he was connected to Shaw’s mind. It’s a sound I won’t be able to get out of my head. Charles falls face first into the sand, clutching his lower back. Erik turns to him, and the horror on his face is unmistakable. The horror tells me one thing: one of the bullets that Erik deflected is now lodged in Charles’s back.

Someone screams. It’s not Charles. His face contorts in a grimace as he grits his teeth through the pain. It’s me.

Erik reacts before I do. He’s at Charles’s side, dislodging the bullet by the time I’m barely on my feet. “I’m so sorry!” Erik tells him. I run to Charles and Erik looks up, his face full of anger. “I said back off!” he yells, and again I’m thrown back by the metal hooks of my suit. I’m going to rip Hank’s head off for designing metal in these stupid things. But I do stay back voluntarily now because Erik holds Charles, and I don’t want him to hurt him any more than he already has. Erik’s deadly gaze turns to Moira, and now she’s the subject of his wrath. “ _You!_ You did this!”

Moira’s dog tags slink up her neck and strangle her. She claws at the chain, gasping for breath, her eyes bulging.

Charles’s soft voice replaces the sound of Moira gagging. “Please. She didn’t do this, Erik. You did.”

At that moment, Erik realizes what he has done, and I realize I will never, ever forgive Erik for this as long as I live.

A loud _boom_ shakes the reality back into me. I look up and see the missiles that Erik and I abandoned falling straight down. Forget the ships. Forget the humans. I don’t owe them anything. It was their fear, their inability to find peace, that led to this. Why can’t I be selfish now, too?

The majority of the missiles run into each other, causing the sound of _boom! boom! boom!_ to be the background for Erik’s words.

“Us turning on each other, it’s what they want,” Erik says. He looks down at Charles with a mix of emotions. “I tried to warn you, Charles. I want you by my side. We’re brothers, you and I. All of us, together. Protecting each other. We want the same thing.”

Weakly, Charles says, “My friend, I’m sorry. But we do not.”

Erik’s eyes close for a brief moment before he looks straight at me. For a second I think he’s about to strangle me as well, but he only gestures with his hand for me to come, and I do. I take off from the sand, slipping in the soft grains, and slide to a halt on my knees beside Charles while Erik moves back and gets to his feet.

I take Charles’s shoulders in my arms and gently move him onto my lap. His face glistens with sweat and sand sticks to his cheek. I brush his wet hair off his forehead and wipe the sand away, too choked up to say anything. Blood seeps out from under him. I can’t see the wound. Just the crimson trail. So much for our bulletproof suits, Hank.

Moira sobs and repeats, “I’m so sorry,” over and over. And Charles, so polite, so forgiving, just says, “It’s all right, Moira.” I hold Charles tighter to me, protective and animalistic, when Moira makes a motion to come forward, and that stops her in her tracks. I’m furious at her almost as much as I’m furious at Erik. Not because it’s Moira, but because she acted so stupidly. Whether she was a good shot from her CIA training or not, she was shooting at Erik while Charles was right behind him.

Erik faces Raven, Alex, Hank, Sean, Azazel, and Angel. He points an accusatory finger at Moira. I think he’s going to lay into her until he says, “Their society won’t accept us. We will form our own. The humans have played their hand–” He gestures to the ships in the bay and the smoke from the bombs in the air “–now we get ready to play ours. Who’s with me?” Azazel and Angel are, of course. Erik killed their leader. Subsequently that makes him their new one. They go to his side.

The others stand rooted to the spot. Erik must have expected as much from the boys, but not Raven. He’s got his hooks in her now, ever since last night. What was just a frivolous action to Erik changed Raven’s world, because it was the first time someone who wasn’t her brother accepted her wholeheartedly for who she is. Erik holds his hand out to her welcomingly, and she stares at him musingly. “No more hiding.”

When Raven takes a step forward, I think, _Traitor!_ Are you kidding me? After all Charles has done for her she’s going to abandon him just like that, while he lays wounded?

But I was wrong. She walks right past Erik and kneels down beside Charles and I. Charles looks up at her; a tear escapes his eye.

“You…you should go with him,” he says feebly. “It’s what you want.”

Raven gives him a sort of sorrowful half-grin. “You promised me you would never read my mind.”

“I know. I promised you a great many things, I’m afraid. I’m sorry.” Charles extends a shaky arm to grasp Raven’s hand. He kisses the back of her glove gently and Raven bends down and kisses his sweaty forehead.

Raven then stares me right in the eye. I’m so weak, so tired, but I find the energy to hold her strong gaze. “Take care of him,” she says.

“I will,” I promise her.

She gets to her feet and takes Erik’s hand. As she turns to her friends, she says, “And Beast? Never forget. Mutant and proud!”

Hank gives off a low growl and turns away. He must feel as I do – like Raven is abandoning us. I’ve only known her for one short week – less than that, actually, but I feel like she is my friend and now I’m losing her.

I notice Erik staring at me expectantly. I look up at him as he looms over me, so tall, so menacing in that helmet that blocks him from my mind. He makes the boldest move he could possibly make at this point by extending his hand out to me.

I stare at it. It’s dirty. There’s a smear of blood on the palm from where he held the bullet that was in Charles’s back. I continue to stare, so unbelievably amazed that he thinks I would abandon Charles in his condition. Or that I would abandon Charles at all. As if to emphasize my thoughts, Charles lets out a small groan.

“Look at the power you’ve presented today,” Erik says to me. “Come with me. I will make you into something great.”

Does he know that he sounds like Shaw? “No, Erik,” I say simply, and look down at Charles. I touch his cheek, his forehead. He’s warm. The sun, the wound, the shock, the exertion. He’s not going to last much longer out here. Out of the corner of my eye I see Erik’s feet turn away, and that’s when I think of our chess match and how he would never let me win. He can beat me at games, but he can never force me to take his side. “Thank you for teaching me to play chess, Erik. You were right, the queen is the strongest piece.”

Erik looks down on me so pitifully. I see myself through his eyes. Just a girl. Dirty. Sweating. Holding onto a broken man for dear life as if my touch can keep the life inside of him.

“But your king is not.” He resumes his place by Raven and his new legion join hands and vanish in wisps of red and black smoke, at the hand of Azazel.

With Erik and all the tension he held alleviated, my body seems to collapse. I take a deep breath and look Charles over. Now that Erik is gone, he, too, seems to now show how much pain he’s in.

“Oh, my god, Charles.” My body shakes. “Get over here and help me!” I shout at the fools that just stand there observing. They immediately run over. “Don’t move, okay?” I tell Charles gently while I run my fingers along his cheek. “We’re going to get you…” I look around the thrashed beach, see the palm trees flattened in the sand, the wreckages of the submarine and the jet. “…help,” I finish dejectedly.

Charles tries to adjust his shoulders and gives a small, shaky laugh. “I won’t. Actually…” Charles’s faint smile drops as his eyes, so bold and blue, search mine. “…I – I can’t – I can’t feel my legs.”

“What?” I stare at Hank as he falls to the sand next to us and scans over Charles quickly. I shake my head, wanting him to tell me that it’s not true.

Charles’s breathing becomes rapid. “I can’t feel my legs. I can’t feel my legs!”

“Calm down, Charles. Lay him flat,” Hank orders me. We gently lay Charles down, and he gives out a cry of pain.

“I’ll call for help,” Moira says. She disappears inside the jet to call on her radio that has been so _goddamn_ helpful up to this point. But she’s in there for a long time. Even now, as the missiles have stopped blowing up and the ships retreat, no one will answer her call.

“Hank, even if Moira manages to contact someone, we won’t make it out of here in time,” I say. “Feel his head. He’s burning up.”

Hank places a furry blue hand on Charles’s forehead and then growls softly. “I can’t tell with this absurd fur.” It’s not hard to see the beads of sweat on Charles’s skin, though, or his body shivering.

“We need to get him to a hospital,” Sean says.

But how? I get up and walk to the edge of the water. My feet sink in the wet, dense sand. I crouch down and stare into the waves breaking on the shore and think. What’s on this beach? What’s beyond the trees that the submarine didn’t destroy? Is there anyone here in Cuba that would help us?

I turn back and see Charles lying there, surrounded by Alex and Sean and Hank. My hands ball up into fists and I curse Erik to furthest depths of hell. And Moira, too.

No, I can’t do that. Damn. Who do I blame? Erik sent the bullet into Charles’s back. But Moira shot the gun.

Quickly, quickly, quickly. We need to be fast. We need to find help now.

I suddenly burst out into laughter. The others stare at me with wild faces, but I laugh and laugh and then calm down enough to dig into the deepest reaches of my mind and find the power I stole from Azazel. I close my eyes and try to concentrate on the cells that make up my body, like I had with the molecules of the metal in the fire extinguisher. A vibration starts in my toes and fingertips and gradually trembles with more intensity until there’s the sensation of being stuffed inside a tiny rubber tube for a split second. When I open my eyes I find myself right next to Charles.

“Holy crap!” Sean exclaims. Hank and Alex are speechless.

“Now may be a good time to say that I also take on a mutant’s abilities when I touch them,” I say. “If I can get this right, I can get Charles out of here and come back for you.”

“That’s incredibly dangerous,” Hank says. “Never mind what your limits are, but if the abilities work by experience, you’d need to master teleportation at long distances by yourself before you even consider taking along someone else.”

“Does it look like we have time? Moira can’t contact anyone. The jet’s destroyed. We need to get out of here. _Now_.” To prove that I won’t listen to any more of Hank’s reason, I zap away from him and appear by the jet. Then I zap away again and appear at the far end of the submarine. I do this for a while, disappearing and popping up all over the beach, increasing my distance, until I disappear from a mile within the tree line and appear just inside a crashing wave when I meant to go farther inland.

“Dammit!” I yell. Stupid waves. I stomp up the beach and over to Charles, dripping water all over, and shake him. His eyes slowly flutter open. “Don’t go to sleep, okay? You can’t do that. Stay with me.” I touch his temple and connect my mind with his. I feel for his nerves, find the roots, follow them along through his spine. I count the vertebrae. One, two, three…I know there’s twenty-four altogether, but the nerves are mangled somewhere around the twentieth. What are the chances that Erik would have sent that bullet straight into the spine? Not an inch to the left. Not an inch to the right. Straight down the middle into Charles’s spinal cord.

“How did we get here, Charles?” I ask quietly. I don’t really expect an answer, though. “How did this happen?”

“I didn’t listen to you,” Charles says. He grits his teeth through a spasm of pain. “We should have stopped Erik before we came to Cuba.”

Just hearing Erik’s name fuels what little fire I have left in me. “Hold on,” I tell him, although I’m the one that holds on to his upper arms and then tries to disappear. I feel like a flickering light bulb until we manage to teleport a few feet down the beach. Charles cries out in pain and I curse Erik again.

Hank rushes over to us. “Okay, seriously, you need to stop. You could kill him.”

“What else are we going to do, Hank?” I yell in his face. “We’re stuck on this godforsaken beach because Erik wanted to make a freaking fantastic exit! And he _left_ us here! He left Charles here with a goddamn bullet hole in his back!” I storm away and burst into the jet, scaring the living daylight out of Moira. “Where are we on that help, Moira? Charles is dying out there while we wait on you!”

Moira’s jaw drops and her eyes well with tears. I fight back the guilt and stand there stubbornly while she continues to attempt to make contact with anyone on the radio. There’s just a lot of static.

“You know what? Forget it,” I tell her. “We need to get out of here on our own. Anyone you manage to contact is going to know that we’re mutants. And then they’ll probably put Charles out of his misery by adding a bullet to his brain.”

I leave her with tears streaming down her cheeks. Good. I’m glad she feels guilty. I mean, I’m sure what I said isn’t true. I doubt that the CIA would abandon us after we’ve given them so much, but I can’t risk it, I can’t trust them. After all, the CIA knew Moira was on the beach and still the U.S. Navy sent their missiles toward us. Trust no one. No human. Erik was half right there.

With one last longing glance at Charles, I disappear and head for the trees. Some miles away, I stop for a breather, and then disappear again. I’ll teleport all over this goddamn island until I find someone who will help us.

After disappearing and reappearing three more times, I cast out my senses and find the first signs of human life other than my own out here in Cuba. The first local’s mind I touch tells me I’m in Siboney. I make it past the tree line and find myself in a very rural village. I stumble along to the first people that notice me, two young men and a young woman, all with tanned skin and thick black hair, sitting outside of a shack.

“Can you help me, please?” I ask them. They exchange glances and look at me blankly. Great. I don’t speak Spanish. I search their minds for words linking to the feelings I have. There’s a few. I have to push past their bewilderment at the way I’m dressed. “ _Ayuda? Ay_ _ú_ _deme?”_ They stand up. Okay, I’ve got their attention. If I could do this the easy way I’d just show them what happened with my powers. But then I’d scare them and possibly their entire village and ruin my chances of helping Charles.

I continue to search their mind and piece together a sentence. “ _Mi amigo_ …he’s, uh… _disparo_? You know, gun. _Pistola_. _Pew pew_.” Oh, my god, I feel like an idiot. But when they exchange glances with each other, it’s with understanding. Holy crap I got through to them.

“ _Ven con nosotros_ ,” the young woman says. She holds out her hand to me and I slowly, slowly step forward, feeling like a wounded animal, and take it.

I kind of let myself be dragged along at this point. The young woman and her two friends take me around to the back of their hut, where they have an extremely old pick-up truck, the kind with only the cab and wooden boards for a bed, under a tarp. After four tries, the engine turns over and we drive into the trees. All I can do is point while we weave through palm tree after palm tree until the thrashed beach finally looms into view. I feel their shock even without my power. Damn. I could have at least moved Charles and the others beyond the tree line first.

_Uh, Hank._ I reach out with my mind until he feels me. _I found some villagers to help Charles. But, um_ _…_ _Hank, I’m sorry, but if they see you they might be frightened._ I feel his growl in my head before he runs down the beach and disappears behind the submarine.

The truck rolls to a stop a little ways away from the group. Between the locals and Alex, they lift a protesting Charles onto the bed. I sit next to him and hold his head to keep it from rolling. Alex, Sean and Moira pile beside us and we drive back to the village. I feel so shameful for sending Hank away.

If I thought there was a way to save Charles’s legs, I would be against having the villagers tend to him. But I felt the nerves, the bones of his spine. They’re destroyed, they’re damaged beyond anything that even a hospital back in America could handle. Of course, we’re taking Charles to one when we get back, but for now, this is all we have.

I sit outside of a shack with my head against my knees while the local medicine man works on Charles inside. I feel his actions with my mind. Cutting the suit from Charles’s body. Cleaning the wound. Wrapping him in bandages. Dressing him in fresh clothes. A young girl brews tea that she makes Charles drink and then they put him on a cot and he goes to sleep.

I remain outside and watch the sun dip behind the trees and cast brilliant yellow and orange, purple and blue streaks in the sky. It’s sundown, and I can’t believe that my life has become such a ruin, yet something so incredibly beautiful still exists. A beautiful sunset, coupled with Charles’s gut-wrenching scream as the bullet penetrated his spine. I cover my ears, hoping the sound will subside, but it only gets louder, and the vision of Charles’s back arching, poised on his toes, gets more vivid.

Alex brings me a cup of water. I drink it willingly. He says they’re going to eat soon but I’m not hungry. The second the medicine man lets me inside to see Charles, I’m going in and never leaving his side.

Finally, after what seems like hours, the young girl pokes her head through the door and nods to me. I get up, stiff from sitting in that position for so long, and go inside.

Charles is on the cot where I saw him in my mind, dressed in beige cotton pants and a white cotton shirt. I take a small stool and sit down next to him. The girl wiped his face clean of dirt and sweat, and now my filthy hand looks dark against his pale skin as I gingerly touch his cheek. The one thing I am grateful for is that he looks peaceful, so young and helpless, as he sleeps.

Oh, Charles. I take his limp hand in mine, bend down and rest my head against his stomach and cry out my frustrations.

End of Part One


	7. It Never Works Out Well for the Good Guys

**PART TWO**

_The past: a new and uncertain world. A world of_ _endless_

 _possibilities and infinite outcomes. Countless_ _choices define_

 _our fate: each choice, each moment,_ _a moment_ _in the ripple_

 _of time. Enough ripple, and you change_ _the tide...for_ _the_ _future_

 _is never truly set. Just because_ _someone stumbles and_

_loses their path, doesn't mean they're lost forever._

_November 19 th, 1962_

_Westchester County, New York_

I take the skillet over to the sink and scrape the charred mess into the basin with a wooden spoon. Once the slop slides off, I hack at the black stuff that’s supposed to be sautéed onions. Thanksgiving is in three days and I still cook with the know-how of a mountain man and a can of beans. And with Charles now depressed and incapacitated, and Hank locked away in his lab at all hours of the day trying to find a cure for his new furry self, and Alex and Sean refusing to touch anything other than the plates they eat off of, that leaves the cooking to me. Moira doesn’t come around much anymore. We invited her over for Thanksgiving dinner, but she politely declined. I would too, after what happened in Cuba.

We escaped the island three days later on a small seaplane that took us to Key Largo, Florida. Alex and Sean found Hank hiding in a tropical forest near Siboney, and after Charles explained this mind trick where I can make the people around us think that Hank isn’t there, I spent the entire flight in complete concentration making the pilot and co-pilot willingly ignore Hank. I couldn’t control their minds like Charles could, which would have been the easier option if I had the power or if he wasn’t so weak, so it was mainly just a lot of modified distraction, which is something that I _am_ capable of.

In Key Largo, Alex stole a truck and we drove up Highway 1 into the mainland. From there, we had to figure out how to get back to New York. We had no money for gas, so we couldn’t drive the stolen truck, nor could we buy train or bus tickets. So we did what any normal person would do and snuck onto a freight train designated for New York. At least I didn’t have to spend the entire ride making sure Hank was never discovered, but it was incredibly hard moving Charles around when we had to carry him.

We finally made it home. For two straight weeks, Charles went to numerous doctors and specialists, and each one essentially said the same thing: there was nothing they could do for him. Even with all his wealth, there are some things money can’t buy.

Charles retreated to his new dark room on the first floor and refused to eat for days, and didn’t speak for a week. I think there was more to his depression than just the loss of his legs. Erik betrayed him, his sister left. And not only left – left with the man who betrayed him. Charles shut me out, shut us all out, and nothing we did could fix him.

Something changed in me during our time in Cuba. Before I had met so many mutants who easily accepted me as one of their own, I only ever had to care for myself. Then I came to the mansion. Once I got over the fact that I wasn’t just second choice to Logan, I realized that I consider these mutants my family. A family that I had never known. And when Erik threatened to take that family away from me, it broke my hardened exterior to reveal a fear that I’d never felt before. Fear of losing those I love. It was also the first time I felt so much compassion toward others.

And it wasn’t just compassion. Seeing Charles get shot, staying by his side in the medicine man’s shack while he lay unconscious, watching him slowly deteriorate as he came to terms with the fact that he would never walk again, hurt me in a way that I had never known before. I’ve never empathized with anyone, cared about them or their wellbeing. Until now. I do care for Charles in a way that I can’t explain. Weeks later, my dreams are still haunted by his screams, by the image of his body falling to the sand. And each time I wake up in a cold, clammy sweat, my heart aches for Charles and I know that I can’t leave him. Not just because he’s broken, but because I’m not sure I could go back to a life without him.

The commercial for Lilt home permanent ends and the U.S. seal flashes on the tiny television set on the counter. I wipe my hands on a towel and turn up the volume as a news reporter introduces President Kennedy. I turn my back on the TV and stir the potatoes boiling in a pot on the stove.

“In this week of Thanksgiving, there is much for which we can be grateful as we look back to where we stood only four weeks ago: the unity of this hemisphere, the support of our allies, and the calm determination of the American people. These qualities may be tested many more times in this decade…”

“And please, leave us out of it,” I tell the president. Let mutant-kind stay hidden. Let the knowledge of our existence die out like a terribly thought up fad. Just let us live our lives in peace. We saved the world once and we didn’t get so much as a thank-you from the CIA. But our solidarity is enough for me.

I drain the potatoes into a colander and then pour them back into the pot. They fall, _thunk, thunk, thunk_ , and I brusquely hear the missiles explode in the air above us. I drop the colander and two stray potatoes skid across the floor. I brace myself against the sink and hang my head, breathing hard.

“Potatoes don’t take well to being thrown about.”

“Charles!” I gasp, and swivel around. “You’re out of bed.”

Charles straightens up and holds out one of the potatoes that rolled to a stop at the base of his wheelchair. His appearance surprises me. He hasn’t bothered to get dressed – he’s in the thin striped robe that he hasn’t washed in weeks – and his face is crowded with hair that he refuses to shave off. If he didn’t look like such shit, I’d think the facial hair looked good on him.

“I suppose it’s time to stop feeling sorry for myself and start being grateful for a change, what with the holidays coming up.” He sounds almost cynical, but I don’t mention it because at least he’s out of his room, which I have to admit is starting to stink. He won’t clean it, and he won’t let me in to clean it. He used to use his room as an escape, and his escape was books and darkness. Now he’s replaced the books with endless bottles of liquor. I do suppose it gets the job done quicker, but I can’t let it turn into a habit.

Charles rolls his chair a few feet to the left, leans down, and struggles to grab the second potato. I step forward to pick it up.

“I’ve got it!” he snaps. I recoil, and he adds hastily, “I’m sorry.”

“It’s all right.” I wait patiently for him to grasp the stupid spud and then hand it to me. “Thank you.”

“What are you cooking?” he asks, and gives a wary sniff in the direction of the skillet I left on the counter.

“Burnt onions and runaway potatoes.”

Charles lets out his musical laugh, a laugh that I haven’t heard in over a month. I have to actually turn to him to make sure that the sound comes from him. And indeed, it is. Nothing that lovely could come from anywhere else.

“Would you like some help?” he asks me.

“Please,” I say, and shove the potato he handed me back at him.

“Keep it. I think you can handle mashing potatoes.” Charles observes the kitchen, which I have to admit I’ve made quite a mess of. “What have you got as far as an entrée?”

“My chicken!” I cry, and leap to the stove and open the oven door to release a swell of black smoke. I cough and wave it away, then grab the oven mitts and rescue my blackened chicken from the depths of the oven. “Oh, damn.”

“Maybe the center is still edible,” Charles suggests optimistically, but when I hack a knife through it we find that it’s charred to the bone. “Bloody hell, how long did you leave it in for?”

“It’s only been in for fifteen minutes.”

Charles glances at the stove and chuckles. “Well, I think I’d come out looking like that if I was cooking at five-hundred degrees, too.”

“What? I only had it at three-fifty.” I groan and chuck the bird in the trash. “I’m no good at this cooking crap.”

“Come here,” Charles says. He pulls me to him and I reluctantly sit on his lap. I feel like I’m going to break the wheelchair, what with my weight and his, but it’s pretty sturdy. Charles had it custom built. Everything is basic, the seat, footrests, armrests, but made with a quality that says, _Check me out, I’m not your average paraplegic_. Charles likes the wheels the most. Large, silver, and only four spokes that form a large X.

“Since you’re up and about now, can you take over cooking again?” I ask him. “It’s either that or starve to death.” Anything I can’t make from a box or a can has been extremely overcooked or raw enough to kill us. I’m surprised the five of us are still alive.

“Yes, if you promise to be my assistant,” Charles says. “I may need a little help reaching…the higher things.” He rarely brings up his condition directly and I see why. He looks so sad. Whether it’s because he’s actually miserable about being condemned to a wheelchair or because the events leading up to and following the moment he lost the use of his legs are too much to bear, I don’t know.

“Of course, I’ll be your assistant.” I become daring and lean in and kiss his lips gently. His hands find my hair and we stay with our lips locked until we’re interrupted by the obnoxious sound of Sean loudly clearing his throat. I jump up out of Charles’s lap like I was sitting on hot coals.

“Oh, Sean. Hello,” Charles says, all flustered.

“I smelled something awesome coming from in here,” Sean says, sniffing the air like a bloodhound. “What is it?”

“Burnt chicken and onions?” Charles says with a laugh.

“Really, nothing here is salvageable except for the potatoes,” I tell him.

“I can fry them. Make breakfast,” Charles suggests.

“But I already boiled them.”

“It’s fine. I’ll fry them up with ham and eggs. It will be fine. Trust me.” Charles touches my arm gently and rolls over to the sink to wash his hands.

Sean raises an eyebrow, breaks out into a fit of laughter, takes a package of cookies from the pantry and does a sort of ballerina-spin into the next room.

I smile. It’s starting to feel like home again.

_November 20 th, 1962_

_Westchester County, New York_

Around noon, Moira shows up unannounced with government news for Charles. I wait impatiently inside the parlor with Alex and Sean while Moira pushes Charles in his chair around the grounds. I pace the room, working through the pros and cons on eavesdropping, while the boys play a game of checkers.

“Why don’t you sit down, Leah? You’re making me nervous,” Sean says. He straddles his chair, leaning against the back of it while staring intently at the game board. He slowly reaches out, places his finger on a red piece, and slides it carefully to the next space in a calculated motion.

“I can’t. I’m stressed.”

“Stop worrying. Your boyfriend is fine.” Alex jumps two of Sean’s pieces with a triumphant smile.

My face flushes. “He’s not my boyfriend,” I mutter.

“Oh.” Alex raises an eyebrow. “Then I would be worried, if I were you.”

I frown. “And why is that?”

“Because he’s probably still playing the field.” Alex nudges the checker board. “Your turn, man.”

“Be calm, brother. These moves take patience. And skill.” Sean observes the board for a good thirty seconds before making another extremely analyzed move. And Alex retaliates by jumping another one of Sean’s pieces.

I go to the window and stare out at the garden. Is Alex right? Charles and I really haven’t talked about anything…futuristic…except when he told me the night before we left to Cuba that he wanted to give me all that I wanted. Then everything with Shaw and Erik and Raven and his legs happened, and I rightfully put everything romantic on hold. I was more concerned with getting out of Cuba alive and making sure Charles didn’t kill himself all alone in his room than worrying if I had a boyfriend or not. Now that worry seems logical as Charles and Moira enjoy a nice midday stroll along the estate together. Something I haven’t even gotten a chance to do.

“I win!” Alex announces haughtily.

“Not in my world, my man, not in my world.” Sean leans the chair back on two legs. “Leah, want to play?”

“Maybe later, Sean.” I walk over to the sofa and flop down on the hard cushion. “What do you guys think you’ll do now that we’re done training, and we’ve accomplished what we trained for?” I ask them.

Sean’s face takes on a wistful smile as he thinks over his answer, and Alex says, a little too quickly, “I’m thinking about joining the military.”

I hoist myself into a sitting position. “Are you crazy, Alex? After everything that happened to us?”

Alex shrugs. “Mutants still seem to be on a low profile. The Cuban Missile Crisis was averted and now the Vietnam War is taking its place. They need people, and to the military I’m just another body.”

I was expecting an answer like, ‘Maybe I’ll go to college,’ or, ‘You know, I’ve been staying in New York for over a month and I haven’t seen the Statue of Liberty. Let’s go take a trip!’ Not, ‘Hey, good friend that’s been taking care of me for weeks, I’m about to go against everything we fought for and join the side of the enemy.’ I already lost Raven. I can’t lose Alex, too.

“Don’t give me that look,” Alex says.

“What look?” I grumble.

“That, ‘You’re a traitor’ look. You had that same look on your face when you first thought Raven was ditching us for Erik.”

“But she did ditch us. And you’re going to ditch us, too.”

“Raven didn’t ditch us. She chose the side that’s willing to fight for who they are. Charles has this odd idea that humans and mutants can live together in one big happy world. It’s happening right now because the humans don’t know how many of us there are, or how strong our powers can be. But look at where his ideas got him? He’s in a wheelchair.”

I narrow my eyes, warning Alex to back off but just daring him to go further. I haven’t had anyone to unleash my rage at Erik on and I’m looking for the perfect opportunity. I was saving it for Moira, but I wouldn’t mind sparing a bit…

“I’m not saying I support humans and the idiot decisions they tend to make,” Alex goes on. “But I can either join the military or go back to jail. I can’t hide out in the mansion forever playing checkers.”

“Maybe I’ll join the military, too,” Sean says wistfully.

Oh, jeeze. I can just see his dazed, happy-go-lucky ass skirting by out in combat, dodging bullets because he did something as simple as bending down to tie his shoe at the rightly wrong moment. It’s hard to tell when Sean is joking and when he’s serious, and I’m scared when I realize he’s actually serious right now.

“No, Sean, you’re not leaving me.” I get up and go behind him, wrap my arms around his neck in an odd embrace. “Everyone is leaving me. I forbid you to leave.”

“It won’t be forever,” Sean says.

I shake my head and my cheek ruffles his long hair. “Sorry. Mama-bird says no. No leaving the nest for Sean.” And just so I don’t have to hear again how Sean and Alex want to go off to the military, I accept Sean’s offer of checkers and take Alex’s seat at the table.

A little while later, Charles appears in the doorway to the parlor. His wheelchair fits through it, but he doesn’t enter. “Leah, can I have a word?”

“Sure, Charles.” I stand up and move one of my black pieces to the edge of the board. “King me, Sean. Alex, you can play for me if you want until I get back.”

“I’ll probably beat him in two minutes,” Alex says as he takes my seat.

“Then go easy on him.” I head to the door and Charles and I make our way down the hall, towards the foyer. “Where’s Moira?”

“That’s what I need to speak to you about.” Charles seems to take extra focus in wheeling himself. “As you know, anonymity is our first line of defense. A very select few of the CIA know we exist, and they’re skeptical at best. Moira knew too much about us. About the mansion, about Cuba, about our specific abilities.” He pushes himself in front of me and I stop. He meets my eyes.

“What did you do, Charles?”

“I’m not proud of it. I took her memories of us.” I gasp and cover my mouth with my hands. “It was for her protection and ours.”

“What will she remember?”

“All her memories of the Coast Guard mission and on have been erased. She no longer remembers us, what we can do, where we live…”

“Moira had supplies sent here. The mansion has your name on it, Charles. If someone really wanted to find it, they could.”

“After the attack on Division X, there are very few agents who would try,” Charles says. “But Moira had information on us that could get her killed.”

I nod. “How did she leave here?”

“I made her think she was lost. Asking for directions. She won’t remember it when she wakes up in the morning.”

“Of course,” I say. Because it’s always that simple with Charles.

But Moira’s gone. She won’t remember a thing. She won’t have to live with the guilt knowing that it was a bullet from her gun that paralyzed Charles, because no matter how Charles may twist it, I still partially blame her. And he just let her go.

“You gave me an idea, you know, when I first met you,” Charles says. “It was just a simple comment, in passing, but it sparked a thought that now I think I may be able to work into a real project.”

“How did we go from brainwashing CIA agents to personal projects?” I grumble.

“I want to turn the mansion into a school. An academy for mutant children.”

“What about anonymity and keeping secrets? A mutant academy doesn’t exactly say ‘inconspicuous’.”

“I’d make it a private academy, give it an unremarkable name. When I used Cerebro I touched so many minds. I could feel them all. Their isolation, their hopes, their ambitions.” When Charles smiles I see for the first time since I met him the strength of a man who can accomplish anything he sets his mind to – a quality that’s been buried underneath sorrow, self-loathing, and alcohol for a few weeks. “What better way to protect our future generation of mutants than to give them a safe place to live and learn?”

Charles has the money, the property, definitely the intelligence to make this happen. Look how much just the idea has changed his demeanor. It would take a lot of work but it could be something wonderful for him. Of course I’d support him.

“I think it’s a fantastic idea, Charles,” I say. “No, Professor Xavier.”

He chuckles lightly. “Oh! Yes, I suppose I am a real professor now, aren’t I? Next thing you know, I’ll be going bald.”

I reach over and run my fingers through his thick, brown hair. In just a month it’s gotten a little longer, enough to where it folds over his ears and touches the back of his neck. “I hope not. I really like your hair.” Charles’s eyes close at my touch and he leans his head gently into my palm. “You know, one day the government is going to realize how lucky they were to have Professor X on their side.”

“To have _all_ of us on their side,” he corrects me. “We can’t be against them, Leah. We can’t hold against them any decisions they may make towards us out of fear. They will learn. And in the meantime, we’ll still be on the government’s side. G-Men, just without the G.”

I shake my head. “You can say we’re on their side, but we’re not their men. We’re our own team now.” We’re Charles’s people, Charles’s army. “We’re X-Men.”

“Well, now, I like the sound of that.”

_November 22 nd, 1962_

_Westchester County, New York_

It’s Thanksgiving Day. Charles’s self-resurrection didn’t come a moment too soon. His wheelchair only provides a slight hindrance that my presence helps to alleviate while we worked in the kitchen all day yesterday and most of today, prepping and cooking a fantastic Thanksgiving meal for the five of us. We play the radio constantly and sing along to nearly every song. Just as I think things might finally turn around for the better, Charles suddenly throws off a deep, intense aura of depression that I sense even with my mind shield up.

“I don’t think I want to do this anymore,” he says quietly. He gently sets the spoon he used to taste the gravy on the counter and turns his chair around.

“Charles–”

“Please, let me go–”

“No, I won’t.” I hold onto the back of the chair and put my foot in front of the wheel, which stops the one side from rolling and swings the other side around in the momentum. He closes his eyes in frustration and grits his teeth.

“I asked you _not_ to do that–”

“Yeah, okay, well, I’m not going to let you go back and lock yourself in your room and drink until you pass out. Three days, Charles. You were better for _three_ days. You can’t let every little memory be a setback.”

“Move your foot, please.”

I lean forward on the armrests of his wheelchair, with my mind shield strongly reinforced and my face inches from his. “Make me,” I say calmly. This just frustrates him more. He can’t get into my mind to control me, he can’t move because I physically block him. Okay, that renders him further powerless and probably doesn’t help his ego, but I’m tired of watching him wither away. “Do you think Raven would have wanted this for you?”

“I’d ask her, but she’s not here.”

“Don’t be a smartass, Charles. She did what she thought was best for her and she did it with your blessing.”

Charles hangs his head spiritlessly. “I know.”

I kneel down in front of him and rest my hands on his knees. “I miss her too, Charles. I know I didn’t have the relationship you two had, but she was becoming my friend, and I don’t have many of those to spare…”

“You have me,” Charles says. “And Hank. And Alex and Sean.” He says this as if he’s trying to convince himself that it stands true for him as well. We’re all we have left.

“Oh.” I look away. “Then you must not have heard. Apparently, Alex and Sean want to be military men now.”

“Is that so?”

“Yes. We might be down two X-Men after Christmas.”

Charles lifts my chin with his finger. “With Hank always in his lab, that could leave more time for just you and I.”

I duck my head and my face gets hot. Charles’ emotions flip back and forth like a pendulum. But if he can flip from general happiness to depression and now to naiveté, who am I to complain?

The radio returns from commercial and I listen eagerly for the song, hoping it’s something I can use to change the subject. The universe seems to be playing Charles’s game, though, because Elvis Presley’s deep, lush voice begins…

 _Wise men say_ _…_ _Only fools rush in_ _…_

I blush harder and Charles smiles. He opens his mouth and gently imitates Elvis’s low timbre, “ _But I can’t help falling in love with you_ _…_ ” I lean up and meet his lips in a deep, tender kiss.

There’s no point in questioning what just happened between Charles and I. Of course, it’s the only thing on my mind while we enjoy the rest of the song and finish cooking. If it was the way Charles wanted to say he loved me, props to him, because it was spontaneous and incredibly romantic. And it really fits our situation, because Charles and I are technically fools rushing into love. If we are in love. What we have is complicated. We’re connected in an incredibly profound way, by the intimacy of our minds and how our mutual cellular structure brought us together. But other than that, we really have nothing in common. Charles is an academic, incredibly intelligent, has skills beyond my wildest dreams. Cooking, for one. I barely passed high school and spent the next few years on the run. He’s looking for someone to latch on to because he lost the one person he was able to trust since he was twelve, and someone he was beginning to see as a brother who essentially stabbed him in the back. Almost literally.

So, do I think Charles really loves me as I tell myself there’s no point in questioning what just happened between us? No, not really. But I care for Charles, and I may have feelings for him, so I don’t mind pretending that he feels the same.

Dinner goes fairly well because everyone is careful to steer the conversation clear of the people who are missing from the table. It’s unmistakable how much Raven and Erik’s absence hurts Charles, though. He smiles on cue, participates in the chatter, but his responses are slow, his smiles dim. He moves his food around on his plate more than he eats it, and when he does, the bites are small and he chews deliberately, methodically. Eating is a daily requirement now rather than something enjoyable. It breaks my heart to see him like this. I catch Hank’s eye often, after I find him checking on Charles just about as much as I do, and I can tell how much Charles’s condition is affecting Hank as well.

Later that night, Charles asks me wearily if I will shield his mind. I accept. I start to notice a pattern. He can’t stand to be locked in his head when he’s stressed or upset, like not having his composure prevents him from keeping a hold on all the voices. That, or when he gets depressed, like today, he just doesn’t want to deal and needs an escape. I have a feeling he’d ask me for it every day if he could, but underneath all of his self-interest he can tell that it’s hard for me to keep up the mind shield so often for extended lengths of time. He’s asked me just about every other day for the past two weeks, and always at night. I’m eager to help him, to assist him in sleep (because that’s why he really wants it, to just sleep in peace for a bit), but it means sacrificing sleep myself. If I doze off, the shield weakens, and Charles has to wake me so I can make the connection stronger again. But I always tell myself as I struggle with heavy eyelids and a nodding head, I’d rather be here for Charles than have him turn to a bottle.

Charles found a way to lock his wheelchair next to the tub and hoist himself over into it. While he bathes, I poke around his room and do a bit of light cleaning. Not much, because I’m sure even with all his fatigue he’d notice that I’ve cleared away all the dirty laundry or straightened a small stack of books on the nightstand. I make a pile of dirty dishes on the bureau by the door. What I’d really like to do is strip down his bed and put fresh sheets, but I don’t have enough time.

When Charles comes out of the bathroom in clean clothes and his hair still damp, I admit he looks a lot better. He still hasn’t shaved, but I’m not about to pester him about that when he’s finally showered. While he works on transferring himself from the chair to the bed, I become extremely fascinated by the drapes and even comment on the fabric. I do this so he doesn’t feel like I’m judging him as he struggles, since he’s too proud to accept physical help. Just the mental kind.

“You don’t have to do that every time,” Charles tells me after I pathetically point out the stitching pattern that I know absolutely nothing about.

“Would it make you feel better if I watched you?” I ask, and when his eyes dart away I say, “All right, then. I’ll continue to find interest in your room.”

“Can you find interest in my mind, please? I’m starting to get a headache,” Charles says, tiredly and annoyed, while he pinches the bridge of his nose. I resist the urge to stick my tongue out at him and go around the side of the bed and turn out the light. He could at least be nice to me since I’m doing him a favor.

The moment my shield touches his mind he sighs and his body goes limp. I can’t imagine what it must be like to be plagued with thousands and thousands of consciousness’s at all hours of the day. And night, apparently, because even though the shield blocks his thoughts from me, I can sense his exhaustion. I empathize with people easily because I literally feel their emotions. You’d think that would make me more compassionate, but it was just annoying all those years. Now that I created a shield, I feel spoiled.

“You know, I’ve been thinking…” he says quietly.

“Shh, can you think tomorrow?” The sooner he gets to sleep and wakes up, the sooner I can go to the kitchen and replace my blood with caffeine while I make breakfast for everyone. Or maybe Charles can do breakfast, since I’ll basically be a walking zombie.

“Hmm, sure,” Charles says easily, and he slowly drifts off into slumber. It’s amazing how different he is when we’re like this. It’s like I’ve drugged him with morphine and he’s able to unwind, to not be such a snippy asshole. But again, I can’t blame him for that. He’s been through so much this past month. Then I wonder, if he didn’t just let himself go, he’d have the strength he had before to fight off his demons.

I get so wrapped up in thinking of Charles during these nights that I often forget to wonder, simply, what are my demons? As I stroke Charles’s hair I ponder this and find that I don’t really know. Sure, I have regrets from my past, like not being able to control my power to the point where I scared every foster family I lived with they wouldn’t keep me any longer, and how in an incredible surge of energy and anger I decimated half of a house and nearly killed a twelve year old boy, but everyone’s got regrets.

When I lived on the streets for seven years, I learned to disassociate from myself. I tucked away all of the qualities that made me _me_ and became this shell of a person just trying to live another day. That shell has been broken by Charles, and now I think I can come to terms with who I really am.

_November 23 rd, 1962_

_Westchester County, New York_

When the first morning rays of sunlight attempt to break through the dark drapes, Charles stirs in the bed and rubs his eyes.

“I had the strangest dream,” he says thoughtfully. “It was of children.”

“Maybe you’re getting baby fever,” I joke softly.

Charles shakes his head, rubbing his hair against the pillow that separates us. “No, not like that.” Then he looks down at himself solemnly. “As if I could have children.” I feel a sort of stabbing in my chest when I realize that’s just one more thing Erik stole from Charles. The ability to have a physical relationship, a family with children that are his own. I admit I hadn’t even thought of that before. Paralyzed from the waist down…I just never bothered to make the connection.

Maybe that’s why he wants a school. To teach kids he will never have.

Charles sits up and stretches his arms. “I think I’m going to talk to Hank today, start plans for the school.” He yawns and edges himself to the side of the bed, where he plops himself into his wheelchair. I assume he’ll eventually become more graceful at that.

I leave Charles’s room with the intention of going to shower. When I get to my room on the third floor, I open a drawer in the dresser and find the multiple gray sweat outfits I wore while we trained last month. I run my fingers over the soft cotton, pinching the fabric between my fingers. No, I won’t shower yet. I’ll go for a run. I change into one of the outfits, wash my face in the bathroom, comb my hair and tie it up into a ponytail.

In the kitchen, I find that Hank has already made a pot of coffee. Bless him. I fill up the largest mug I can find, fix it with cream and sugar, inspect it for blue fur at the last moment, and take a seat across from Hank at the table. My head droops over my mug and I grip my hair while I breathe in the lovely coffee aroma.

Hank lowers his newspaper and eyes me over the top of it. “Long night?”

I lift the mug to my lips. “ _Mmm_ ,” I say into the brim of it. Hank smirks, which is quite a sight underneath the blue fur and black nose and rimmed glasses, and returns his focus to his newspaper. “What was that look?”

“Nothing.” Hank shrugs. “Just notice you’ve been spending a lot of time with Charles. In his room. At night.”

I choke on my coffee and find myself annoyed. “He can’t sleep, Hank. All the pain he’s in? He can’t control the voices like he used to. It’s tearing him apart.” A soft growl rumbles in the back of Hank’s throat as he hangs his head. “Yeah. That’s what I thought.”

“I knew he was struggling, I just didn’t know it was that bad,” Hank says.

“Yeah, well, he’s going to talk to you today about a project of his he wants to put into motion, so don’t bring up his problems unless he does.”

“What project?” Hank asks.

“Spoiling the surprise, are we?” Charles says as he rolls into the kitchen.

“No, I’ll let you do the honors,” I tell him. I drain the last of my coffee and wash the mug in the sink, then set it on the rack to dry. “I’m going to go for a run. See you later.”

Freshly energized from the caffeine, I head to the foyer and out the front doors. I stand on the first of three steps leading to the gravel roundabout and take a deep, slow breath. It’s still fairly early. I’ve had a poor sense of time since I arrived here since the only clocks are in some of the major rooms, and I haven’t bothered to get a watch.

I take a left and decide to go to the furthest reaches of the grounds. The air is clean and fresh, the sun is shining. I could stay out here all day.

Less than a half a mile out the coffee wears off. Instantly, I become dead tired and slow to a walk. I guess I’m stuck with my thoughts for a while.

Out here, I realize the property has no set perimeter. I’m sure the neighbors that are miles away know which part of the land is theirs, and Charles knows which part of the land is his, but the students won’t. There will need to be gates set up around the grounds, and maybe large pillars separating gates that will swing open when cars drive in. And that’s where the sign for the school will be, at the far edge of the drive, obscuring the mansion, so when the kids pull in they will be as dazed as I was my very first time here.

I get excited so I pick up a jog again and daydream about all of the things this school could have. I could help guide the young mutants with powers that resemble my own. Of course, they’d need structured education as well. Charles could build a pool, basketball courts, restore the stables and get horses. We could have archery lessons and a track. Charles will need teachers – maybe I could teach physical education! I’m definitely not qualified for anything else. Then I laugh at myself. The kids would laugh at _me_. The young ones would ask, _Miss Hayes, why are you teaching P.E.?_ And I would say, _Because I was too poor to go to college, and teaching gym class was all my tiny brain could handle._ And the older kids would just poke fun and make jokes, possibly call me stupid.

I need to go to college. I’d love to go to Harvard like Charles, but it’s an all-male institution. Radcliffe College is the female half of the school. I wonder if I could apply for scholarships to pay for tuition. I highly doubt engaging in more poker tournaments would go over well with Charles. I’d need to go to the library, then. Do research. That would require a drive. I’d need Charles’s car. I look back at the mansion, which is no bigger than the size of my palm now. That would require learning to drive.

I take off at a sprint and curse my life. Curse the life of women. Why are we subjected to simple housework and childbearing? I’m one step away from that here! I’m already doing the cooking, even though I suck at it. I’m a mutant, for crying out loud. I can read people’s minds, control metal, teleport! Wait, I can teleport! I focus my mind and disappear in a poof, reappearing at the front doors. I sway on my feet and grip my head, feeling dizzy. I think I need food.

“Charles! Hank!” I call as I walk through the foyer, the halls, over to the kitchen. “Can someone teach me to drive?” I grab a banana from the fruit basket and peel back the skin. As I chew through the soft flesh I search for someone, anyone. Alex. Sean. Where have those two gone off to?

In Hank’s recently restored lab I find Hank himself and Charles pouring over a low table filled with papers, most likely plans for the school. I toss the banana peel in the trash and lean against a counter. “I need to borrow a car. Please.”

“Do you even know how to drive?” Hank asks, and Charles says at the same time, “What do you need a car for?”

I make a face at them. “I need to drive to the library to do research on Radcliffe College.” At their blank stares, the stupid academics, I add, “I want to go to college!”

They exchange a glance before Charles sighs. “We should discuss this.”

I laugh incredulously. “Why? I don’t see how it concerns you, other than I’d need to borrow your car to drive to the library.”

“Hank, excuse us,” Charles says, and nods to me and we go out into the hall. “I’m trying to talk over some important information with Hank. Why would you drop in with this right now?”

I feel like a child that just walked in on her father’s business meeting. “Sorry I inconvenienced you, _Professor_. Maybe I’ll just walk.”

“That’s not what – get back here, Leah.”

I stop in my tracks and spin on my heel, facing him with my arms folded over my chest. “Yes?”

“Don’t give me attitude,” he snaps.

“Don’t be a jerk!” I say. “I just wanted to borrow your car!”

“You can’t even drive!” Charles stretches out his fingers and retracts them into fists, and grits his teeth. In a calmer tone he says, “I would have liked you to come to me at a different time about this college situation so we could discuss your tuition.”

My bottom lip juts out as I frown at him. “What…?”

“If you wanted to go to college, all you had to do was ask. A friend of mine has a brother who is a dean at Radcliffe. I could make a call and have you in by next semester.” He looks up at me emphatically with one eyebrow raised, and my eyes shift to my feet.

“Oh,” I say quietly.

“Although I will be disappointed if you leave to university and won’t be around to see the school transform,” Charles says.

“That’s actually what gave me the idea. When I was out running, I started to think about all the things you could add to the grounds, like horses and archery, and I thought, maybe I could be the gym teacher, and then I remembered I would soon have less of an education than the students I would be teaching so I’d better go to college.”

Charles laughs and takes my hand. “I would be honored to have you as Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngster’s third official teacher.”

“Wait, third teach– ‘Gifted Youngsters’? Charles, there was so much wrong with that sentence.”

“Well, I’m a professor, of course, and Hank will definitely teach. And you don’t like the name of my school?”

“Not entirely, no.”

“Well, I do. And I believe it was the name ‘Xavier’ in the title, not ‘Hayes’…”

With a promise of a driving lesson tomorrow, Charles returns to Hank’s lab for school preparations. I wander off in search of more food and for Alex and Sean, wondering why Charles didn’t invite me inside to be part of the plans.

I scramble eggs over low heat – remembering Charles’s tip – which is the safest thing for me to make alone, and eat them out of the pan with a wooden spoon while I stand at the counter, staring out of the window above the sink.

I would have never flat-out asked Charles for college money. I shouldn’t have been so quick to assume he wouldn’t offer, though, either. For the first time in a long time, I allow myself to feel a bit of joy: I’m going to college!

_November 24 th, 1962_

_Westchester County, New York_

As promised, I get a driving lesson today. After breakfast, Charles and I head around to the separate garage off the main house. I open the doors to reveal two pristine cars like I’ve never seen. Light floods in and catches on the clean paint, making the cars dance in the sunlight. Charles describes them with passion.

He rolls up to an immaculate sparkling red beauty and sets his hand lightly on the hood. At first, Charles speaks gibberish, mentioning a 5.4 liter V8 engine, four-speed Hydra-Matic transmission, bumper bullets, and then gradually things make sense when he gestures to a wraparound windshield, boasts air conditioning, and shows me a hard tonneau cover flush with the rear deck that hides the black convertible top.

“This,” he says proudly, “Is a nineteen fifty-three Cadillac Eldorado coupe.” He says this as I notice a gold nameplate with the word ‘Eldorado’ on the dash. “Only five hundred and thirty-two were put into production.”

“Wow.”

“It wasn’t running a month ago, but Alex is a pretty decent mechanic. He and Sean fixed the choke mechanism in the carburetor and now it’s working again.”

“Interesting,” I say, for lack of something better to say.

“And this,” Charles says, dramatically gesturing to an off-white car next to the Eldorado, another coupe, but this one considerably shorter and a lot less boxy, despite the incredibly long hood, “is my most prized possession. A nineteen fifty-seven Jaguar XK150. I bought it when I was at Oxford and shipped it back here.” He gives the coupe a longing glance before continuing.

He says it’s a two-seater roadster, and he is eager to show me a leather-lined dash panel with an aluminum X engraving. I have a feeling he spent I don’t know how much money on the sports car just for that very feature. He goes on to talk about the engine, about how it’s smaller than the Eldorado at 3.4 liters but offers larger exhaust valves for more boost. Sure, Charles. I let him enjoy his moment because it’s the most excited I’ve seen him in a long time. If I had known he’d cared so much about the cars I’d have asked to see them sooner, just to lift his spirits.

“And, under no circumstances other than the Eldorado is for some reason malfunctioning and I am dying and a house call from a doctor is otherwise unattainable and I need to be taken to a hospital immediately, are you to drive this car,” Charles says sternly.

“What if _I’m_ dying?” I ask. “Or Hank or Sean or Alex?”

Charles’s eyes flit between the Jaguar and the Cadillac. “Yes, I suppose then you may drive the Jaguar.” Then he breaks out into a wry smile and I know he’s at least partially joking about the whole ordeal. After his smile slowly fades he stares longingly at the Jaguar. He’s never going to drive the car – any car – again.

“So, am I to take it you’re going to teach me to drive in the Cadillac?” I ask.

“Very good,” Charles says, and rolls himself around to the other side of the Eldorado. He skillfully tosses me the keys across the open top and I catch them. “Come on, get in.” I open the driver’s side door and try to pay more attention to the creak of the white leather as I sit down than how Charles awkwardly opens his own door, locks his wheelchair next to the passenger’s seat, lifts the arm and slides over, then contemplates his next move. He shoves the chair away with some force, since the chair is heavy, and closes the car door. “There! That wasn’t so bad.”

“One of these days you’re going to have to let me help you,” I tell him.

“Nonsense,” Charles says, huffing from the effort it took just to get in the car. “Let’s get on with it.” He waves his hand at the steering wheel. “Start the engine. Don’t overturn the key, now. You don’t want to grind the ignition.”

I successfully start the car and the engine roars to life inside the garage. It grumbles happily while Charles instructs me to place my foot on the brake pedal and shift into drive. I do so, and feel the gears shift individually as I bring the lever down gently.

“All right, now you’ll want to lift your foot slowly off the brake. The car will roll. Then when you’re outside, you’ll add a bit of gas for some momentum.” I notice Charles grip the side of the door as the car inches forward, and this annoys me. Before we’re completely out of the garage, I tap the gas pedal, making the engine roar and the car jump forward. Charles yells out in fright and his knuckles turn white as he makes fists to grip onto nothing. “Don’t do that!”

“Then you need to trust me. I may not have driven a car before, but I’m not an idiot. And in case you’ve forgotten, I control metal.” I lift my hands off the wheel and take my foot off the pedal and a second later the car comes to a stop. “We’ll be fine.”

Charles looks at me disdainfully before allowing his fists to relax. We continue on down the gravel path. Every so often Charles allows me to increase my speed. There aren’t any real turns so he just has me practice speeding up and coming to a proper stop that won’t give him whiplash. I turn the radio on and enjoy the sensation of the wind whipping through my hair and the sun warming my face and arms as we drive at fifteen miles an hour around the grounds. By lunch I’ve gotten pretty decent at driving.

When I’ve pulled into the garage – forward, since I can’t back in yet – and shut off the engine, I say proudly, “That was amazing! I think I’m ready to try flying jets! Think Hank will teach me?”

“Let’s just stick with cars for now,” Charles says. He opens his door and finds that his wheelchair is now on my side.

“Allow me,” I say. I hurriedly get out and push the chair around to him. I hold it steady while he lifts himself into it. I resist pointing out that with me holding the chair, he has a much easier time getting into it.

“Thank you,” he mumbles without looking at me.

I close his door and hand him the keys. “Charles.” I sigh and kneel down in front of him. “You’re brilliant, you know that, right? You’re the most intelligent, kind-hearted, strong man I’ve ever met and it wouldn’t make you any less so by asking for help once in a while.”

He closes his eyes for a moment, and when he opens them, they seem so impossibly sad. They’re too beautiful for such sorrow.

“Why is it that you care so much?” he asks me softly. I think back to the other night, when he sang Elvis’s song. If he considered himself in love with me, he wouldn’t be ashamed to ask for help. If he knew of my love for him, he wouldn’t question my compassion. I now feel as sad as he looks. “I could understand why you would want me before, but now–” he gestures to his body, his chair “–there is nothing I could give you.”

I open my mouth, so ready to explain again why his condition means nothing to me, when I remember we have a very special gift, a very special connection, and I’ve been blocking that from us. How different things might have been if he could have felt what I felt all of these weeks, all the good and the bad. I look deep into his clear, ocean blue eyes and completely let down my shield. I study his face as he explores all of my thoughts and emotions for him.

I feel his reluctance, so I guide him through. All the way back to the day we met. I allow him to see himself through my eyes, how I was completely wrong in my first impression of him (considering him posh and stuck up, for one) and show him how beautiful I found him after I dropped the attitude I was giving, which he just found amusing.

I show him how he went to each person in the mansion, found their faults, their inner battles, and completely transformed them. How he molded us all into a team, into the X-men. He ends up finding out that Raven and I snooped on him and Erik, and I’m struck with a wave of longing and agony at the recollection of them. I quickly change my thoughts, wander off down to the pond where we shared our first kiss, then to the night before we left to Cuba, when I realized that I didn’t want to lose him.

From there I try to reinforce how he doesn’t have to be walking to be resilient. Everything he did in Cuba he did with his mind, with his command, and I admire him for it. When he tries to pull away from the memory I place my hands on the sides of his face and will him to stay with me, so I can show him the remarkableness of the team he created, regardless of what Erik did. Erik always had his own agenda, from years before Charles met him, and it would take years to change his mind, if that were possible. There was nothing Charles could have done to prevent Erik’s actions in the weeks he had with him save for controlling him, and Charles knows he would never have done that. Another thing I admire him for. For being the better man.

Charles was in too much pain while he lay wounded on the beach to understand the fear I had that I was losing him, the rage I had at Erik and Moira, and that if Charles had died that day before Erik made his grand exit, Erik and quite possibly Moira would most certainly be dead. This scares Charles, but not because of an odd devotion that grew too quickly out of a bond of shared minds and intimate trust, but because the only other time he felt a similar wrath was in Erik’s mind. But I’m not like Erik. Erik is evil. I’m not. I wouldn’t abandon my friends when they refused to join his ‘new society’.

And then we come home. My life was uprooted and tossed into one of those tornados that Purple Tuxedo created in his palm, but the one consistent factor that made everything worthwhile was Charles. But Charles’s drinking habits are sending him on a dark path for which there is very little hope for return if he doesn’t find a way back to the light soon. I touch upon his idea for a school and how incredible I think it will be, and I let him see the possibilities I’ve thought about in the past twenty-four hours. When a small spark of life ignites at this point, I realize that this school will redeem him, and I will do anything, _anything_ , to see that it is a success.

Charles is still weak. My pathetic attempt to show him my journey of how I came to deeply care for him won’t magically cure him. I saw a dark corner of his mind that I didn’t want to explore. A tiny area that even he refuses to delve into. Even though it doesn’t matter to me, it matters to him. Before he came back to New York, when he wasn’t busy working on publishing his thesis in Oxford, he was hitting on women. It was a favored pastime, and he was of course very good at it. Even if he decided to give up that frivolous lifestyle and settle down, he couldn’t exactly enjoy lovemaking anymore. I tried to show him, for a fleeting moment, that I don’t care about that, but he does. And that’s why he won’t pursue anything with me.

Maybe it’s for the best. I can go to college without worrying about leaving Charles behind. Hank will have to look after him, make sure he doesn’t hurt himself or retreat back into a haunted state of mind. Charles can work on his school. I have to trust that his mutant academy will be his saving grace from lost sisters and backstabbing friends and paralyzed legs, if I can’t be.

“Wheelchair or not, Charles, you are capable of so much,” I say quietly, slowly. I have to choose my words carefully. Not because Charles is sensitive, but because I’m not particularly good at this. “You’re still the same man that so boldly directed us in Cuba. I never saw you any differently after…I mean, I still…no matter what…” I can’t bring myself to say that I would love him no matter what, but I don’t need to. Our minds are still connected. I drop my hands from his face and put up my shield again, which has become second nature. I’d better stop now before I end up with my foot in my mouth.

He takes my hands in his and turns them over a few times, exploring my fingers, my palms, as if he were seeing them for the first time. I watch, curiously.

“I believe you,” he says. He waits until I look at him. “I believe you are the only one that would.”

I nod once, feel a smile pull at my lips, and stand up. “Let’s go inside.” We leave the garage and I pull down the doors. “Thank you for the lesson.”

“Any time,” he says. “We can come out driving a few times a week if you’d like. Although next time or the time after we’ll have to leave the estate to fill up the gas tank.”

“Oh, an adventure. I’d actually like that. I haven’t left this place since Cuba.”

“There’s plenty out there to explore. I expect you’ll be exploring Massachusetts next.”

I look down at him, puzzled for a moment, until I remember that that’s where Radcliffe College is. Wow. It seems so far away. “Thank you again, Charles, for offering to pay for my tuition.”

He smiles up at me so warmly that I finally believe that he really would give me everything I wanted, just like he said.


	8. A Christmas Miracle (Because I'm SO Badass)

_December 8 th, 1962_

_Westchester County, New York; Manhattan, New York_

I wake up in my bed on the third floor. It’s just another day – a Saturday, to be specific – but when I open my eyes and look around I feel a difference. There’s a spirit in the house that I’ve never felt before. I throw back the covers and rush to the windows, whip back the curtains to reveal a wonderful sight of snow flurrying past the windowpanes.

Snow! I’ve never seen snow before. I was smart enough to stick to warmer climates during winters on my own, and I never lived in a foster home where it snowed in California. I press my face to the glass and admire the scenery.

It must not have been snowing for very long. The grass is still green, there’s just a light layer of white powder on the tops of the trees and over the stone railings. I rush to the bathroom, wash up, brush my teeth, comb my hair, dress in blue pants and a white turtle-neck and flats, and dash out of my room, bubbling with excitement. The spirit I felt in my room is stronger out here, and after I cast out my senses and find everyone in a main room off the foyer, I know why.

I’ve never seen a lovelier sight. In the corner of the main room a giant green tree has been set up, and Charles and Hank are adding ornaments and tinsel to it. Alex goes around the room placing small decorations on tables and the mantel, including stockings. Sean sits at a long table laid out with all the supplies. It looks like he’s supposed to be weaving wreaths but I think he’s just having a battle with the fake doves. Elvis Presley’s take on _Winter Wonderland_ plays on the radio. Mugs of coffee and doughnuts and bagels and fruit are mixed in with the decorations. They all look happy, and in turn, I observe them with the biggest smile on my face.

Sean looks up and sees me hovering by the double doors. “Leah! Come join us!”

“What’s all this?” I say, running my hand over a length of gold tinsel on the table. “No one said anything about decorating for Christmas.” In fact, I didn’t even think we’d have Christmas. It was never mentioned before, and I’ve never celebrated it in my life.

I receive funny looks from them all. “Of course we’d decorate for Christmas,” Charles says. “Why don’t you help Sean. I think he’s forgotten how wreaths are supposed to look.”

I sit down next to Sean and take a sprinkled doughnut. “This looks really great. Are we going to do the whole mansion?”

Hank lets out an exasperated laugh. “Do you know how much time that would take? I think the one room is enough.”

“And maybe a few things in the foyer,” Charles adds thoughtfully. “It’s been such a long time since this place had reason to be festive.”

“When was the last time you decorated for Christmas?” I ask him.

Charles places a green glass ornament on a low hanging branch and thinks for a moment. “Nineteen…no, I didn’t come home that year. Nineteen forty-nine?”

“Wow, it’s been a while,” I say.

“Well, after my mother died Raven and I left for England,” Charles says. “The house has been empty since then.”

“Oh,” I say quietly. Charles takes a silver ornament and hangs it on a branch without another word, as calmly as if he had just informed me that we were having pasta for dinner. I have to admit, I’m proud of him. He mentioned his mother’s death and Raven in the same sentence and he didn’t bat an eye.

“I’m glad we’re having Christmas,” Alex says. “I spent the last couple of them in the slammer, and, well, Sean and I probably won’t be around for the next few.”

“What?” I say, appalled, and Sean looks up from his doves as if this is news to him as well. Alex rolls his eyes at Sean.

“Come on, man. You knew.” Alex glances at me sheepishly, then gives Hank and Charles a stronger look. “Our papers came yesterday. We leave for the Army January fifth. They’re shipping us out to Vietnam.”

A sort of strangled cry escapes my throat. Hank claps Sean on the back and Charles shakes Alex’s hand. Commemoration. That’s what they’re giving them? Congratulating them for fighting for the country that had their missiles gunning for us just weeks ago? Words that I never thought I’d hear with a positive intonation fill my head as I stare blankly between Hank and Charles, at the green bristles of the huge tree.

“ _Why fight for a doomed race who will hunt us down as soon as they realize their reign is coming to an end?_ ”

Jeeze, who’d have thought Shaw would be right? I mean, he was going about the situation entirely wrong. He was damning mutant-kind in his crusade, subjecting us to a harsh, cruel future of ridicule and torture if we were ever found out and caught. But was he so wrong in his reasoning? If he had been smarter and proved his point without setting two powerful countries against each other and consequently against mutants, would Charles still be so accepting of humans? Would Alex and Sean be so willing to sacrifice their lives for their war?

Well, we _all_ were at one point, including me…

Erik’s face floats in front of my mind and then vanishes just as quickly as Charles calls my name, breaking my trance.

“Hmm?” I say in a dazed voice.

“Thought we’d lost you there,” Charles says. He turns back to the boys and they continue to chatter amongst themselves.

I try to relish my time with Alex and Sean since I don’t seem to have much of it left. I get up and help them finish garnishing the room, and then we move our little decorating party to the foyer, adding some Christmas spirit to the entrance. I set up two four-foot white angels at each end of the staircase, Alex and Sean run red and green tinsel up the banister, and Hank hangs two large wreaths on each front door as a finishing touch.

“Splendid,” Charles says happily.

Charles and Hank then talk of disappearing into a room off the foyer that Charles designated his study. When they aren’t tucked away in the back wing in Hank’s lab, they are here, talking business about plans for the school. Charles assured me that I would be quite bored with all of these proceedings and that I won’t miss much, but that he would call upon me if he thinks there is something I can contribute to. Having no knowledge in whatever it is that Hank and Charles are up to, I doubt he’d need me.

I spend most of my days exploring the mansion, jogging, reading. Alex teaches me how to lift weights properly. Occasionally, when the weather is nice, Charles and I go out for a drive. Today, though, Charles has other plans for us.

After bestowing me with the keys to the Eldorado and a rather generous amount of cash, Charles sends Alex, Sean and I off for Christmas shopping. Alex rides shotgun and Sean sits in the backseat, hanging over the front between Alex and I, and we drive with the radio blaring into town.

The boys sing along to the songs but I miss most of the words because the majority of my concentration is on the road. This is the longest drive I’ve had yet. I don’t even get to enjoy some easy rock song that Sean makes us all shut up for, as he’s been anticipating this new artist Bob Dylan, because we’ve left the countryside and entered the crowded city streets. The other cars on the road and the light snowfall makes me nervous. I have to turn the radio lower.

“Whoa, the song’s not over!” Sean complains.

“Sorry,” I tell him as I slow the car down. “This is new territory for me.”

Sean slumps back in his seat. “Such an underrated talent.”

“It’s not about Bob Dylan, all right?” I snap. I slow the car to a stop at the red light behind a blue Buick and close my eyes for a moment. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to yell.”

“’Sall right.” Sean shrugs. “Why are you so worried, anyway? You can do all this crazy stuff. Stop missiles. Contain nuclear energy. Read minds. Why is driving such a big deal?”

I glance up at Sean through the rearview mirror. The light turns green and the slow progression of cars resumes. “I don’t know. It’s just different out here. I have to do it the human way. And if something bad happens, I have to let that play out the human way, too. We can’t do anything mutant-y to stop it or else we blow our cover.” I turn the volume dial a few clicks to the right. “I’ll get the hang of it soon enough.”

I pull up in front of a Macy’s and we step out into the thin layer of snow in the parking lot. Everything has a wintery, Christmas feel to it, and it lightens my heart. I’m very much aware that this is my first time being out in public since I came to live with Charles and everyone. Going to the gas station that one time to refill the Cadillac didn’t really count.

“Okay, where to first?” I ask the boys as we rush inside out of the cold.

“Up to you,” Alex says. “I’m not a shopper.”

“Someone’s got to be the leader,” I tell him.

“I will!” Sean boldly says with his hand in the air, and takes a large step forward and faces the huge store. He places his fists on his hips, puffs out his chest, and takes a hard inhale through his nose and lets it out through his mouth. “Onward!”

Alex and I willingly follow Sean around the store as he pokes around random things. Clothes, appliances, toys. Charles basically just handed us a wad of cash and said, ‘Have at it!’, but I hope to at least get something worthwhile out of the trip. Having never bought Christmas presents before, I’m a little worried I won’t do it right. Alex has to remind me at the last minute to buy boxes and wrapping paper.

We walk through different stores and I enjoy every moment of it: the shoppers, the music, the atmosphere, the company. I hardly think about how soon I will be losing Alex and Sean because something else has been nagging away at the back of my mind: What will I get Charles for Christmas? It’s bad enough I’m going to get him a gift with his own money, as my measly stash of cards cash has run out, but what do you get someone whose only desires are something money can’t buy?

It turns out to be pretty simple to buy for Sean. In JCPenney, I come across a small box of magic tricks for beginners. I think he’d love that, and it’s possible he could take it with him to Vietnam. I send Alex and Sean away and then double back and buy it. I have the clerk wrap it in brown paper so I can keep it with me while we walk around. I do the same thing at a record store, where I find a vinyl with a picture of a young man in a wool-lined jacket and black cap, holding a guitar. _Bob Dylan_ is written in red next to his face, and I eagerly show this to Alex while Sean is preoccupied with a small stack of new 45’s. Alex confirms that this is the guy Sean hasn’t shut up about for the past few weeks, the artist that people aren’t taking too well to but Sean seems to think will be a huge success. Alex drags Sean out of the store and I purchase the record.

Alex and Hank show a little bit more of an obstacle for me, but not as large as Charles. Alex rarely talks about himself, and of course I know Hank’s nerdy. I just have to figure out how to put that into gift form. I find a nice, silver shaving set that I think Hank might like until I remember he’s now blue and covered in fur. Alex says he just might get it for him anyway.

“You know how he feels about himself,” I scold Alex. “Why would you tease him like that?”

“It’s just a joke,” Alex says as he places the set back on the shelf. “Besides, I don’t know what else to get him. Or Charles. The man is rich. He doesn’t need anything.”

“It’s not about needing things,” I say. “It’s the thought that counts.”

Alex shrugs. “No matter what we get him, he’ll know he’s technically the one who bought it.”

I roll my eyes. “What are you getting Sean?”

“No idea. Too bad he doesn’t grow facial hair, or I’d get him the shaving set.” Alex folds his arms over his chest and taps his lip. “But Charles does. I’ll just get it.”

For Hank, I end up finding a huge elegant black Turkish cotton robe that I send off to be monogrammed with his initials in gold. He can’t wear any of his clothes now that his Beasty self has grown three sizes, and since he’s determined to find a way to transform back into the old Hank, he kept them and took to wearing Charles’s stepfather’s wardrobe, who was a pretty large man. I also buy him a blank leather-bound book. Maybe he can use it for notes or something.

We eat lunch at a burger joint outside of the mall and make a game of guessing personal information about people. For instance, Alex and Sean will try to guess the state of a couple’s marriage, or if that man is wearing a toupée, or what those women really think about each other, and I’ll read their minds and tell them if they’re correct. It’s actually quite fun, but we end up laughing too much and start to draw attention to ourselves, so we have to stop.

After lunch, we go back to the mall and I wander off alone. It feels good to be out of the mansion, around other people. I owe everything I have to Charles. Granted, mostly everything I have isn’t mine. The money, the car, the clothes, the purse. But I’m not ungrateful. I feel like I’ve suffered long enough and I deserve this.

I pass an engraving store and I get an idea. I walk inside. There’s no one behind the counter. There aren’t any customers, either. I browse through the blank nameplates and trophies until an elderly man emerges from a back room, smiling a toothy smile.

“Hello, miss,” he says. “What can I do you for?”

My eyes fall on a gold-colored rectangle of metal, about the size of two vinyl records side-by-side, and I grin. If this works, it will be brilliant.

“I need a plaque,” I tell him.

_December 24 th, 1962_

_Westchester County, New York_

Christmas can’t come too soon. I’ve been bursting with excitement for two weeks over my secret gift for Charles, and I’m utterly grateful for my shield so he will be surprised when he unwraps it. At least he will have one present this year where he won’t know what it is before he opens it.

After dinner on Christmas Eve, we all sit in armchairs in front of a blazing fire in the room with the Christmas tree. It looks lovely with our small pile of presents underneath, waiting to be opened tomorrow morning.

Charles and Hank’s conversation drifts to business while they sip their drinks. It sounds like plans for the school are coming along nicely. They have endless meetings lined up after the holidays, with construction supervisors and business and property managers. I don’t know how they’ll manage to pull off the meetings with Hank in his blue form, unless Charles plans to spend the entire time making their associates think Hank looks normal, or go alone.

Sean, Alex and I play poker and make bets with peanut shells that we add to the pot after we’ve eaten the nut inside. After finding out about the way I used to make a living, they make me swear I won’t count cards or read their auras. Turns out without those two factors, I’m a pretty crappy poker player.

Outside, the snow falls, obscuring the view from the many wide windows, cocooning us in a warm, picturesque night that I will never forget.

Slowly everyone drifts off to bed. I trudge the long, lonely journey to the third floor and take off my red dress and matching shoes. I crawl under the covers and try to calm the butterflies in my stomach. In two short months, I went from a cold, calculating, distrusting girl to a woman who is finally capable of love. I have a home, my own bed, friends. I owe it all to Charles.

_December 25 th, 1962_

_Westchester County, New York_

I sleep peacefully and rise early, but not the earliest. I bound out of bed, don slippers and a fluffy pink bathrobe that matches my flannel pajamas, wash up in record time, and dash downstairs. I find Sean on the second landing, in a blue bathrobe and socks, rushing to the first level as well.

“It’s Christmas!” I squeal.

“Yeah!” he shouts. When we reach the foyer, we skip arm-in-arm to the tree room.

“Merry Christmas!” Sean and I call to Hank, Alex, and Charles, who are all there in pajamas and bathrobes as well, drinking coffee. Hank and Charles each have pieces of the newspaper. Alex sits in front of the low burning fire with a magazine.

“Merry Christmas!” they chime back, and then after a moment of silence and eyes darting between the corner of the room and each other, we all rush over to the tree like children and start to pass out gifts.

Sean finds one of my gifts first and his eyes bulge when he peels the paper away from the vinyl. “Bob Dylan! Aw, you remembered.”

“You only talked about him non-stop for weeks,” Alex says, and then opens up a small, rectangular present from Charles. It’s a book. He eyes it funny before looking up at Charles. “ _War and Peace?_ ”

“One of the greatest novels ever written,” Charles tells him. “It’s about war, conflict, and its impact upon all involved. Very fitting to our situation and something I think you might enjoy while you’re off fighting in a war of your own.”

Alex’s face lightens and he nods, looking quite taken aback at the meaningfulness of the gift. He throws off a grateful yet guilty aura, and I think he wishes he got Charles something a little more thoughtful than a silver shaving set. “Thank you, Charles,” Alex says sincerely. Oh, my boys are growing up so fast.

Hank opens up a box with new, extremely large slippers from Sean. A low rumble accumulates at the back of his throat, but then he cocks his head to the side. “Actually, I think I could use these.”

“Open mine, then, Hank,” I say, pointing to a large package with a gold bow on top. Hank opens it and takes out the monogrammed robe, which matches the slippers.

“Hey, I love it!” Hank says, and promptly removes the battered, white robe that was straining against his broad shoulders and puts on the new black one, which fits perfectly. He pulls on the giant slippers over his blue monkey feet, then stands up to model his new attire for us. “Thanks, guys.”

I fall in love with my presents, mainly because I’ve gotten presents for the first time in my life. I unwrap a red sweater and green scarf from Sean and a pair of sunglasses and a cookbook from Alex. I crumple up the wrapping paper and toss it lightheartedly at Alex as he laughs hysterically.

I receive a single, large box from Hank wrapped in green paper. Inside are all the things I could possibly need for college classes. A shoulder bag, pens, blank notebooks. I’m touched. Charles, of course, pulls out all the stops. A small, gold beaded handbag. A couple of books he says I can take with me to Radcliffe. An antique wooden jewelry box. And then my very own pieces of jewelry to go inside.

“Oh, my God,” I whisper as I open the black velvet box. Inside is a diamond necklace like I’ve never seen. The pendant is maybe about the length of my pinky and folds back on itself. It’s decked with dozens of tiny diamonds shimmering in the light. There’s also a matching diamond bracelet and diamond stud earrings. “Charles, they’re beautiful.”

“They were my mother’s,” Charles says. “I thought you might like them.”

I try on the bracelet. I’m probably wearing more money than I’ve ever collectively had in my entire life, despite my poker winnings.

Sean gets a Grow Your Own Sea Monkey kit from Alex and freaks out with glee at the thought of owning a monkey from the sea, but Hank kills his vibe by saying they’re just brine shrimp. Sean pouts until he opens Hank’s gift: a lava lamp. Charles got him a yellow transistor radio with a leather strap and carrying case, practically rendering his Bob Dylan record useless, but all that is abandoned when Sean opens the magic set from me, and he spends the rest of the morning learning card tricks, how to make coins vanish, and practicing sleight of hand by trying to swipe the others’ gifts when they aren’t looking.

Alex gets a Swiss dress watch and Aramis cologne from me. Hank’s gift to him is a new pair of running sneakers and Acqua di Gio cologne.

“What, do I stink or something?” Alex says. Now it’s Hank’s and my turn to laugh.

Sean, craftily catching on, hands Alex his small gift and says it’s more cologne. We all laugh at Alex’s scowl, but it turns out to be just a new deck of playing cards. Sean also found a collection of comics for him that renders Alex speechless for a bit. Alex said he hadn’t seen them since he was a kid, and thanks Sean warmly.

Hank actually likes that blank leather-bound book I got him, and says he can use it to document his discoveries with the new serum he’s developing. It goes with the antique pen set and some lab equipment I don’t recognize that Charles bought for him. Alex and Sean put together a “Beast Grooming Kit”, and after I leapt up to stop Hank from ripping the boys’ heads off and Charles hurriedly dissipated the tension with his mind, they quickly explained what it was.

Alex and Sean found a large, blue wooden box that actually matches the color of Hank’s fur really well, and Alex skillfully painted the word _Beast_ in curly yellow writing across the top. Inside, the boys packed things that wouldn’t normally come in a grooming kit. They couldn’t get him a human kit, or an animal kit, so they improvised with pieces from each. Different sized combs, clippers, hair trimmers, an array of shampoos and conditioners and creams for different types of hair – coarse, thick, fine – and even a small selection of sample colognes for Hank to try, to see what would smell all right against his fur. Honestly, I think it’s a really thoughtful gift, and if it wasn’t for the way Alex described everything, and Sean’s petrified face as he held up the items Alex mentioned with a shaky hand, Hank probably wouldn’t have agreed to not tear them to shreds. He eventually accepted the gift, and secretly, I think he liked it.

Charles opens his shaving set from Alex, which looks quite plain now compared to the one he helped create for Hank, a large globe on a stand that opens up to reveal a small liquor collection from Hank, and a gold pocket comb and a positively ugly yellow tie from Sean that has just about every Christmas icon you can imagine on it – Santa Claus, a snowman, ornaments, a Christmas tree, doves, wreaths, snowflakes, candy canes, stockings, mistletoe. Charles actually laughs heartily at the tie and swiftly puts it on, making Sean smile. Finally, just like I planned, the last gift to be opened is the one I have for Charles.

“Ladies and gentlemen! I give you, the Last Present,” Sean announces as he takes the long package from under the tree and crosses the mess of wrapping paper on the floor to present it to Charles. “Jeeze, Leah, what’s in here? Steel?”

“Not quite,” I say, and watch eagerly as Charles throws me a peculiar glance before slowly ripping the paper away, lifting the lid, moving aside the white tissue paper. And then his jaw drops a bit.

He sits there silently, staring at the box in his lap, while we all wait with bated breath. Sean opens his mouth, most likely to tell Charles to hurry up and show us, so I pinch him. He makes a short squeak in the back of his throat and glares at me. Finally, Charles smiles and heaves the plaque out of the box and turns it to face us.

What started as a long rectangle of gold has now been cut into an oval with a trim in black. That same black hue is inlaid around the writing carved into it. At the very top is an artful X in a circle, the X-Men crest, and underneath, in big, bold letters, is:

_XAVIER’S SCHOOL_

_FOR_

_GIFTED YOUNGSTERS_

_1407 GRAYMALKIN LANE, SALEM CENTER_

_WESTCHESTER COUNTY, NEW YORK_

The others are quick to show their appreciation, but Charles is still speechless. He stares at me with a look of complete admiration, and I see his eyes become shiny, as if he’s fighting back tears. As Hank, Alex and Sean disperse to enjoy their presents, Charles manages to reach up and tap his temple once. I let down my shield.

_Words cannot describe how much I love this gift_ , he says, and even in his mind he sounds choked up.

I look down at my slippers sheepishly. _I can’t really take all the credit. I couldn’t have bought it if I didn’t have money from you._

_That’s not the point_ , Charles says, _You created this. You came up with this idea. I couldn’t have done it better myself._

_You picked the name._

_Which you hated, if I recall._ He chuckles softly.

I get up and sit in a chair next to Charles and look again at the plaque. “Now that I see it like this, official and everything, I think I like it.”

“As do I,” Charles says. He reaches out and pulls me to him gently by the nape of my neck. I run my fingers through his soft hair and meet his lips with mine. I’m suddenly very aware that the room is silent, with just the sound of the crackling fire. I don’t care, though. I finally feel life inside Charles as he kisses me.

After we break apart, Charles turns to the others. “I do have a confession to make. This wasn’t the last gift. I have one more for each of you.” He rolls over to the sofa and produces four long boxes in matching red paper with silver bows from behind it.

“Oh, Charles, you spoil us,” Sean says as he takes his present.

Charles watches as the four of us unwrap our surprise gifts. The boys get through theirs first and find expensive tuxedos. Single breasted shawl collar jackets, formal waistcoats, pressed black trousers, crisp white shirts, straight-end ties, plain-toe Balmoral shoes. Charles even went so far as to include cufflinks and studs, white silk pocket squares, black socks, and suspenders.

I finally remove the last of the tissue paper to reveal the most gorgeous piece of fabric I’ve ever seen. I gasp and take the top of the dress and stand up, letting the garment unfold. It’s a floor-length velvet strapless gown in a rich, dark-green hue, with a sweetheart neckline and fitted bodice and petticoat. Around the waistline, where the sleek bodice and the ripples of the petticoat meet, is a gold rhinestone beaded sash. I look down at the box and find a pair of beaded gold heels.

“Charles, it’s gorgeous,” I say.

He smiles at me warmly. “I’m glad you like it. What about the rest of you?”

Alex and Sean pick through their tuxedo and Hank lets out a low growl.

“This isn’t my size,” he says with a threatening look that doesn’t even make Charles flinch. It would have made Sean cower in fear, and possibly wet his pants.

“Actually, my friend, it _is_ your size. Just not the size you are right now,” Charles says.

“And how does that help me?” Hank growls. “What do we need these silly monkey suits for, anyway?”

“You should talk about silly monkey suits,” Sean mumbles. Alex sniggers, but it’s cut short by a snarl from Hank.

“I thought we would all go out tonight and see a play,” Charles says.

“On Christmas?” Alex asks incredulously.

“Of course,” Charles says. “It’s the last show of the year for _The Nutcracker_.”

“The ballet?” Sean wails, with slight disdain in his voice clearly meant to mean that he’s a boy and too old for ballets.

“Oh, don’t start, Sean,” I say. “I’ve seen you _pirouette_ -ing around the mansion.”

“What are you talking about?” Sean asks with a frown.

“All those prissy spins you do?”

“That’s a _pirouette?_ ”

Hank lets out a snarl that gets all of our attention. “This is nice and all, but you’re forgetting one thing. I’m a _beast!_ ” His last word echoes in the room as the rest of us fall silent. “I can’t go out in public like this.”

“That’s where you’re wrong,” Charles says simply. “I’d like to try something in your lab after breakfast. With Leah.”

I look up from stroking the soft velvet of the gown. “Me? What can I do?”

“As much as I wanted it to stay hidden, it’s no secret that you take on mutant’s powers when you touch them,” Charles says. “I know you touched Raven.”

My face gets hot. “What…?”

“You allowed me into your mind with no restrictions,” Charles explains easily. “What did you think I would find?”

“Right,” I say.

“So, with Raven’s ability, I think we can temporarily change Hank back into his former self,” Charles says, with an air of superciliousness that makes me think he thinks he’s really clever for coming up with this idea.

The others, however, aren’t so easy to jump on board. Neither am I, for that matter. Sean and Alex are simply surprised to find that I can also shapeshift.

“Charles, we really need to think about this,” I say. “I haven’t tried shapeshifting before. It could be dangerous.”

“That didn’t stop you when you had Alex shoot plasma beams at you,” Charles says matter-of-factly.

“That – that was different,” I say. “I only really put myself at risk.”

“I’ll be there to guide you,” Charles says.

We look at Hank, who runs the fabric of the tuxedo jacket through his furry fingers. He hasn’t said a word yet.

Finally, he looks directly at Charles and says, “You must have some serious faith in Leah if you already bought this tuxedo in my old size.”

After breakfast, Charles asks Alex and Sean for privacy and he, Hank and I go to Hank’s lab, still dressed in our pajamas and bathrobes. It’s the only time I’ve seen us all dressed so lazily (except for when Charles refused to get out of bed). But, it’s Christmas.

In the lab, I can’t help but notice how much it’s changed. Hank has sure made himself right at home. The amount of equipment has tripled, and there’s an entire corner of the room set up with graph drawings and files that I’m immediately drawn to. I drift over to the desk and pick up the top drawing. What looks like a large three-dimensional circle with a long rectangle halfway down the middle and a crude sketch of a control station at the center take up the entire page. At the top, someone, probably Hank, hastily wrote _Cerebro_.

“Cerebro?” I say, turning the paper towards them. “This was the machine you used to locate mutants?”

“Yes, but it wasn’t _that_ machine,” Hank says, taking the drawing from me. “The Cerebro I had back at Division X was considerably smaller, and made out of a radar installation. This is a design for something new. Something we’re going to build right here in the mansion.”

“For what? A special telepath course or something?”

“Not exactly,” Charles says. “We plan to build a sort of underground base of operations and training facility for the X-Men.”

“It will have a lab probably five times this size, and a hangar for another stealth jet I’m going to build, and this new Cerebro,” Hank says excitedly.

“Charles, do you know how long that’s going to take?” I say. “I thought you wanted to get this academy up and running. How are you going to have all this construction going on with a bunch of mutant children wandering around?”

“It’s a work in progress,” Charles says with a shrug. “If I get everything expedited, construction could possibly start in a few months.”

I’m unexpectedly glad that Charles and Hank kept me out of all the behind-the-scenes work. My mind spins with just this little bit of information. I don’t think I could handle trying to manage setting it all into motion.

“Okay, so what’s the deal with Hank and this shapeshifter business?” I ask.

“You appear to be able to do an unlimited number of things with your mind–” Charles begins, and I cut him off by saying, “Except control people.”

“Still,” Charles says, “you’ve shown on multiple occasions that something you _can_ do is project your consciousness, your shield. I’d like to see if you can project your shapeshifting ability.”

“But then I would have to keep contact with Hank the entire time,” I say.

“Maybe not.” Charles wheels himself in front of Hank and observes him. “I don’t want to try to turn Hank into someone else. What I want to do is unlock his human traits. If you do that, he may be able to hold on to his human qualities for the evening.”

Hank folds his arms across his chest and growls out a pout. “What happens if I don’t hold onto it for the entire evening and I turn into a furry blue monster in front of a crowd? This seems like an awful lot of trouble to go through just to see a ballet.”

“Hank, where’s your spirit?” Charles asks with a sly smile.

“You’re crazy,” Hank says, and walks away to sit in front of one of his microscopes and fiddles with a glass slide.

“I think Hank’s right,” I tell Charles. “Not that you’re crazy, but that there’s a lot that could go wrong if this doesn’t go as planned. I mean, it’d be different if we had weeks or even days to practice this, but you sprung this on us day-of. I haven’t even tried shapeshifting myself before.”

Charles leans forward in his chair. “Then I think it’s time you start.”

I sigh and roll my eyes. “Hank?”

“Whatever,” he rumbles. “You go ahead and turn yourself into someone else. I’m going to work on perfecting something that will actually permanently make me normal again.” And with that, he puts the glass slide in place and jams his eye in the microscope.

Charles gives me this look that says, _Well? Why aren’t you changing?_ I close my eyes and focus on breathing. In, out, in, out. I calm my mind and dig around for the ability that will change me into someone completely different. I’m nervous. That doesn’t help. Usually I’m not nervous. Stressed, maybe. But not nervous.

I concentrate on Charles. Since he’s the one in front of me I figure I might as well transform into him. I feel my individual molecules like I did when I first tried to teleport, and I will them to change. But I don’t have the slightest idea how molecules work. They’re not supposed to change. My hands ball into fists and I grit my teeth. When I open my eyes, I’m still me.

“I can’t do this,” I tell Charles.

“Calm your mind,” Charles says gently.

“I am calm,” I snap. “I just…I don’t know _how_ to do it.”

“How have you done everything else?” Charles asks me.

I shrug. “I just did them.”

“That helps,” Charles says with a laugh. “Can you try to replicate that feeling you had before you accomplished the other things?”

“Maybe. I was calm. And I focused on doing it. That’s what I’m doing now.”

“Can I…?” Charles wiggles his fingers by his temple. I nod and let my shield down, and seconds later Charles is with me in my head. He doesn’t dive in like I thought he would. It’s more like he circles the periphery of my skull and pokes around at things he finds interesting. Then, unexpectedly, I’m overwhelmed by this wave of tranquility, like a smooth drug through my veins, and Charles retreats from my mind.

“You won’t be able to succeed if you are afraid,” he tells me. “Let go.”

“I think you let go for me,” I say breathlessly. “What did you do?”

“I allowed you to relax,” he says. “Truly relax.”

I just hope I’m not too relaxed that I can’t completely focus my powers now. It kind of feels like I’m drunk. I gather my wits and find those molecules again. And I let go.

There’s a weird sensation in my body, like I’m bubbling from the inside. I thought it would be more, well, feathery, considering that’s what Raven looked like when she transformed. A feathery blue array. But me, I bubble and boil for maybe ten seconds before I stop, and then I feel normal. Well, almost normal.

“What the–” I say, and I’ve got an enticing English accent just like Charles.

“Amazing!” Charles exclaims, sitting up straighter in his chair as his face brightens.

I look over at Hank, who emerges from his microscope only to fall off his stool with a loud _thud_ at the sight of two Charles’s in the room. I run to a nearby glass board and see my reflection through it. Charles stares at me, completely astonished.

“This is incredible!” I say. And then I laugh. And then I laugh again at my laugh. I can’t get over hearing Charles’s voice come out of my own mouth. I look down at myself. I wear his blue bathrobe and checkered pajamas. And that’s when I realize _I’m Charles_. “So, this is what it’s like to be a boy.”

“It is,” Charles agrees. He looks sort of sad. I reach out with my senses and receive waves of yearning and nostalgia.

His legs. How I walk around in his body. My stomach burns with an uncomfortable feeling and I release myself and materialize, in five seconds this time, as me.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I should have picked Hank.”

“No, it’s all right.” Charles forces a smile.

“Too bad I can’t project a shapeshifted spine for you, so you could walk again.”

“I think that’s a bit beyond what we’re trying to achieve,” Charles says. He clears his throat and composes himself in seconds. “Why don’t you try again.”

I decide to challenge myself and transform into someone I recall from memory. Like Sean. I close my eyes, and, with the pressure of Hank and Charles’s attention on me, endure the bubbling boil that feels more like a tingling sensation now and find myself looking around from a new height.

“Whoa,” I say in Sean’s drawl. His shaggy hair covers my eyes and I push it aside. I’m taller now. I walk around a bit to test out the new length. “I’m going to have so much fun messing with Sean’s head now.”

Even though Charles laughs, he says, “Let’s focus, shall we?”

I turn back into me. “What does it look like? When I change? I feel like a pot of boiling water. I thought it’d feel more like how Raven looks when she changes.”

“You do look like Raven when she changes,” Charles says. “You’re just not blue.”

“What color am I?” I ask, now really curious.

Hank walks over to us. “It’s not just one. There’s red and gold.”

“And a bit of black,” Charles adds.

“Odd,” I say. “Red and black could be because of the teleporter. He releases red and black smoke when he teleports. That doesn’t explain the gold, though.”

“Wait,” Hank says suddenly. “Can you teleport again? Just in here.”

“Um, all right.” I disappear and pop up across the room. Hank and Charles exchange glances. “What?”

“There’s red and gold smoke when you teleport, too,” Hank says.

“Not just that,” Charles says. “It took on a shape before it dissipated. What did that look like? Wings?”

“Well, I’m sort of flying away.” I chuckle at my own joke.

“Are there any birds that are red and gold?” Charles asks Hank.

“Plenty have majority of either color,” Hank says, “Cardinals and finches are mainly red, goldfinches and canaries are mainly yellow. I mean, I don’t know…I’m not an ornithologist.”

“Why are you guys suddenly so interested in birds?” I ask. “I thought I was supposed to be shapeshifting Hank.”

Hank and Charles nod at each other with a look that clearly says they’ll continue the conversation later.

“No, wait, what’s up with this bird stuff? Who cares if the smoke looks like wings?”

“We were…just curious…about why you weren’t blue when you transformed like Raven, since you took her power,” Hank says. “Maybe it’s significant.”

“Nice save, Hank,” I grumble. “Who cares? I can’t even see the colors when I change. It doesn’t matter if I’m red and gold. Besides, I don’t want to be a cardinal or a canary. Those birds are boring. If I’m going to be a red and gold bird I want to be a…a phoenix or something.”

Charles and Hank’s eyes both widen. “That _is_ something…” Charles mutters.

“What’s something?” I ask. “Guys, you’re freaking me out.”

“You’re right, it doesn’t matter,” Hank says. “Want to try shapeshifting me now?”

“I guess,” I say, but I’m still curious as to why Hank and Charles focused on my teleporting and shapeshifting details so much.

Hank clears off a metal table and lays down on it. “You know, once we’ve got our underground lab, I’m going to make sure we have way more comfortable tables.”

I pull up a stool and sit behind Hank’s head. I tentatively place my hands on the sides of his furry temples like I do with Charles and then wait. There’s no shock.

“Your fur must block the initial conduction, like clothes,” I say with a laugh. I’m secretly relieved that I won’t turn into a furry blue creature with monkey feet. “So, what exactly am I trying to do, now?”

Charles seems to snap out of a reverie and rolls himself over to me. “Search Hank for the traits that make him human.”

“You want me to go into his DNA?” I say skeptically.

“That’s essentially what you just did with yourself,” Charles says.

“I know, but that was different. I didn’t really have to do anything. My body already kind of knew what to do.”

“Then make Hank’s body think it knows what to do.”

I groan. “Charles, things aren’t always that simple–”

“Aren’t they?”

“Is this how you’re going to deal with your students when you’re trying to teach them, I don’t know, math or something? ‘Professor Xavier, I don’t understand this equation.’ ‘It’s simple, Billy. It’s all there, in your head. Just focus’.”

Charles scowls at me. “I’m trying to help you.”

“Fine.” I look down at Hank. He stares up at me with his furry face and soft hazel eyes. “Sorry, Hank, but there won’t be any more secrets once I go inside.”

“Just share a few of yours and we’ll be even,” Hank says.

“Deal,” I say, and he grins. I enter his mind and try my best not to pay attention to his thoughts as I attempt to locate his cellular structure as if I’ve been doing this for years. Eventually I get a sense of the molecules I felt when I was searching my own body, and I try to go a bit deeper. Maybe Charles can help direct me. I ask him, and soon, his mind is there too, guiding me along the very cells that make Hank _Hank_ , and I find myself in the strangest scenario I’ve ever been in my entire life.

_Okay, Leah, project your ability to transform now_ , Charles instructs me.

_Uh, yeah, maybe that’s what we should have practiced before we got to this point._

_There’s no time like the present._

_Are you guys seriously debating this while simultaneously taking invading personal space to a whole new level?_ Hank growls sarcastically.

_Sorry, Hank_ , I say hastily, and work on expanding a force field. In that force field, I push forward the bubbling sensation as well as the image of the way Hank used to be, as if maybe the cells have forgotten, but once the sensation has crossed the barrier from my mind to Hank’s, nothing happens.

I look up at Charles. His face is set into extreme concentration. _When we share the shield, I’m able to project it because I’m shielding my mind as well,_ I tell him.

_Your DNA changes when you transform_ , Hank says suddenly. _I found that out when I was studying Raven. I mean, it has to change. How else could you shapeshift?_

_Transform into the old Hank,_ Charles says. _Then project yourself into him._

I retract my force field and recall the Hank I haven’t seen in over two months. Brown hair cut like the Beatles, the same glasses and soft hazel eyes, baby face, tall and lanky. With a spurt of bubbling energy, I transform, and Charles nods in approval.

_Very good_ , he says.

I lean back over Hank and he laughs. _That’s so incredibly strange. It’s like looking into a mirror from the past._

_Hopefully soon it will be like looking into a normal mirror_ , I tell him. At Charles’s okay, I project the bubbling sensation through the force field and then Hank lets out a loud roar that frightens me. Charles reaches out and grabs my hands to steady me.

Right before my eyes, I see the red and gold and bit of black Hank and Charles mentioned earlier fan out from Hank’s blue fur and black robe just as Raven’s blue feathery scales had. He continues to roar, and I think, gee, it didn’t hurt me that much, and as his blue fur melts into pale skin his roar fades into a regular, human yell that falters and fades as he peeks out through squinted eyelids. And just like that, Hank is back to normal.

“Did it work?” Hank asks quietly. There’s no longer a growl to his voice.

“Yes, my friend, it did,” Charles says with a triumphant laugh.

“Holy shit,” I whisper in Hank’s voice. I forgot that I still look like Hank, so when he looks at me, he laughs and points.

“Wow, I look good!”

“Can – can I take my hands off now?” I ask Charles weakly. There hasn’t been a shock yet even though my hands touch Hank’s skin instead of fur, and part of me wants to believe it’s because my DNA thinks I’m touching myself right now. I sure hope so.

“One thing at a time. Try bringing your force field back first,” Charles says. I do so, then he instructs me to transform back to myself before breaking contact. And Hank still looks like a human once I do so.

Hank goes over to the same glass board I went to and examines himself in the crude reflection. He presses on his cheeks and says, “I honestly didn’t know how long it would be before I saw this face again.”

“Technically you saw it on me a few minutes ago,” I tell him breathlessly. For some reason, the effort of shapeshifting Hank took the wind out of me. I stay seated and Charles rests a comforting hand on my shoulder.

“How long do you think this will last?” Hank wonders aloud.

“I don’t know,” I tell him.

“Your guess is as good as mine,” Charles says. “Leah and Raven seem to hold their form as long as their mind is focused on it. So, Hank, don’t lose your mind and maybe you’ll stay like that for a while.”

“Ha-ha.” Hank turns to us. “So, what time is this ballet?”

“Sure, now you’re excited,” I say.

“Curtain is at five,” Charles says. “We can have an early dinner here and then head to the theater around three-thirty.”

“Sounds great,” Hank says. He wanders towards the door. “I wonder if I still have my beast strength. That way I can beat up Alex and look good doing it. Oh, Alex…” He disappears around the corner.

Charles chuckles softly and I say, “Hank will be going to the ballet tonight with two black eyes.”

He turns to me. “You were really incredible.”

“You helped.”

“You don’t always have to be so modest,” Charles says. “Take credit for things you accomplish. Be proud of what you achieve.”

I take Charles’s hands in mine and look deep into his eyes. “I will do just that, Charles, if you promise to take your own advice when the time comes.”

Charles gives my hands a squeeze. “I promise.”

We leave Hank’s lab and I go upstairs to shower and wash my hair. A long bath involving scrubbing myself clean and shaving my underarm and legs, and four attempts at an up-do with hair pins from Raven’s room later, I’m beat. I lay back on the chaise in regular clothes, completely wiped out, thinking I’ll take a nap before I put on make-up that I took from Raven. I don’t know how girls manage to do this on a daily basis.

After a dinner of Christmas Eve leftovers, I return to my room to put on the gown that’s been laid out on my bed all morning. The inside is silky soft and fits perfectly when I pull it over my head. The shoes are excellent as well, not so high that I can’t manage them. I examine myself in the mirror and feel like a princess.

I’d really like to wear the jewelry that Charles gave me but they don’t match the gold sash. Instead, I take simple gold studs and a gold bracelet from Raven’s collection and then meet the boys downstairs. It’s nearly three-thirty, and Charles will want to leave soon.

I walk down the stairs carefully, clutching the banister, taking calculated steps and feeling my weight each time so I don’t misjudge the heels and send myself toppling to the lower level. In the foyer, Alex, Sean, Hank and Charles chat, looking positively handsome dressed in their tuxedos, but as soon as they take notice of me the only sound in the room is the faint click of my heels on the steps as I descend. I catch Charles’s eye, find him staring up at me in awe with his lips slightly parted, and I blush.

Sean wolf-whistles and Alex catcalls, and Hank gives me a far more pleasant compliment. Charles finally manages to say, “You look absolutely stunning.”

“Thank you,” I say softly, blushing harder now.

“If you’ll all indulge me before we leave, I’d like a picture,” Charles says, and nods to a large black camera on a tripod stand near the door to his study. Hank grabs it and we gather in front of the Christmas tree in the next room. Hank sets the camera up and runs the cord around the front so he can be in the picture as well. I stand next to Charles, with Alex and Sean on my right and Hank on my left, and in a puff of white smoke the camera goes off with a flash. Hank reloads the film and takes one more.

The Eldorado waits outside the front steps. Charles take the passenger’s seat after Alex, Sean and I clamber into the back. Hank puts Charles’s wheelchair in the trunk and then drives off.

We arrive at the Lincoln Center Plaza a little after four. After we pile out of the car and get Charles situated in his wheelchair, a valet takes the Cadillac. The plaza is gorgeous, with high pillared white buildings surrounding a large fountain, glowing in the light from the setting sun. We follow a throng of people into the Performing Arts Center and I gasp when we get past the lobby.

The theater itself is rows and rows of red velvet seats and levels of balconies that reach up to the ceiling, all arched toward a gigantic grand curtained stage. Charles directs us out of the crowd to an elevator that takes us up to the third level, and here we find a private balcony reserved in Charles’s name. We’re the second balcony from the stage. If we were one more to the right, I could reach out and touch the thick, purple curtain.

A waiter comes and takes our drink orders. I sit at the edge of my seat, peering over the brass railing, watching the theater fill up. Everyone looks so beautiful. The men in their tuxedos and slicked back hair, women in gowns similar to mine, with jewelry flashing in the light from four giant crystal chandeliers.

For the remainder of the evening, I’m swept up in a winter wonderland of Christmas magic, ballerinas, dancing toys, Sugar Plum fairies and gorgeous music. My eyes are glued to the stage, and even during intermission it’s hard for the others to get my attention for fear I’d miss a single moment of the play when the curtain rises again.

It’s amazing how watching this play transforms me. It’s not quite the same as seeing a really good movie on screen. Here, the magic is real, presented for me in real time, accompanied by music that enchants me so deeply my heart and spirits are lifted by a strange longing I can’t explain. And at the end, after the cast comes out for a standing ovation, for which I’m sure I’m one of the loudest clappers and cheerers in the audience, I settle back down in my chair and stare out at the chandeliers in a stupor.

We hang around the balcony waiting for the crowd to disperse. There’s no use fighting the people when we have Charles’s wheelchair, even though Sean suggests we could use it as a battering ram and make it to the front in no time. Charles asks me how I liked the play. I turn to him, gleaming.

“It was so incredible,” I tell him. “Magical. I didn’t want it to end!”

He chuckles. “Yes, the theatre can have that effect.”

“When was your first time going to the theatre?” I ask him. “What did you see?”

Charles smiles broodingly. “My parents took me back to London when I was six to see _Balalaika_. It was a new musical play.” I feel like there’s something Charles isn’t saying, so I just smile and wait patiently while he stares over the balcony. “We spent Christmas in England that year. My father died just before New Year’s.”

“I’m sorry,” I say quietly. Now I feel bad for asking.

“Don’t be,” he says easily. “The play was a wonderful last memory with my father, and so was that Christmas.”

I want to ask how his father died, because there’s still so much I don’t know about Charles, but now is probably not the best time. The theater has now emptied enough for us to make an easy journey to the exit.

I lay in bed that night with quite a few things running through my mind. The play, for one, is always at the front, supporting me with joyous memories. Hank miraculously kept his human form for the entire evening. On the ride home, when Alex made a comment that upset Hank, I noticed his face and hands take on a blue hue until Charles calmed him down. I mentioned that to him, and he thought it was interesting.

I sadly recall Charles’s father before realizing that Charles seems to be all right about it. His father died when he was six, far too young to remember him. At least, that stands true for normal children. Charles’s mind has always been highly developed, though, so I’m pretty sure he remembers everything from a young age. After all, he told me just last week, in confidence, about how he came to discover his power.

Mutants were very scarce twenty-one years ago, so Charles, like me, and like Erik and Raven and possibly every other pre-pubescent child developing strange abilities, thought he was the only one in the world. Over the next two decades he devoted the majority of his schooling to research mutations and came to learn that there are plenty more mutants in the world than he could have ever dreamed. But when he was nine years old and already incredibly intelligent, he started hearing voices in his head. His instinct was to research his condition in the vast library in the mansion. So, naturally, the only conditions that accounted for voices in his head was psychosis or schizophrenia. He lived for three years thinking he was a lunatic with a strange version of a multiple personality disorder until his powers developed and he finally learned the voices weren’t his. And then when he met Raven stealing food in his kitchen, disguised as his mother, he read her mind before she turned blue and found that he wasn’t alone; he wasn’t the only strange creature on the planet, and there must be more.

How lucky Charles was, to have a slightly more pleasant experience with his abilities. When I was twelve I nearly sent a foster kid into a coma when I accidentally touched his skin while playing tackle football; when Charles was twelve he adopted a mutant sister. I lived the next twelve years trying to hide myself, wondering why I was the only abnormal person in the world, and Charles happened to come across another one of our kind in his own kitchen and even went so far as to study mutants.

As I roll over in the soft feather bed and cotton sheets, I think, I can’t complain. It all turned out all right for me in the end.


	9. College Life

_January 10 th, 1963_

_Westchester County, New York_

This is going to be the year of new beginnings, I can feel it. Granted, it started with a loss, as Alex and Sean left for the Army just five days in, but things are quickly going to turn around because at the end of the month is the start of spring term at Radcliffe.

I was sad to see my friends go because that just meant two more people that wouldn’t be around to talk to every day, but they promised to write when they could. I doubt Alex will keep that promise, but I know I’ll hear a lot from Sean. I got pretty close to him over the past few months, and it hurt to see him go.

My sadness was matched by Hank’s annoyance at Alex. He couldn’t care less if Alex never came back. He’d had the final straw when they got in a little spat before New Year’s (Hank had managed to hang on to his human form for nearly three days) and he got angry. His anger released the Beast, and since then he’s locked himself in his lab again, blue and furry, determined now more than ever to find a way to make himself normal again. He asked me for a few vials of my blood to aid in the process, and I agreed as long as he promised to look out for Charles while I was gone. I sat on a stool in his lab, with a tourniquet around my upper arm, cringing away from the long needle, while Hank drew the blood. He’s sure that deciphering the strange properties of my DNA will help advance the serum he developed with Raven’s.

Charles seems to be doing a lot better as well. I was worried that Hank’s Christmas gift would send him back to his room, drinking the days away, but he seems strangely composed now that he has his mind set on getting the academy underway. That’s good for me, because it will be one less thing I have to worry about when I’m away at school.

_January 21 st, 1963_

_Westchester County, New York; Cambridge, Massachusetts_

The day I’m to leave for Radcliffe I lay in bed before sunrise, staring at the ceiling, watching the room progressively fill with light. My bags are packed and waiting by the front doors in the foyer. My outfit is set out on the chaise. Charles has arranged everything so really, there’s nothing to worry about. Still, I’m nervous and anxious and scared and excited all at once. I’m thrilled to finally be going to college but then evil thoughts plague me: what if I’m not smart enough for my classes? What if the other students find out I’m a mutant? What if they take one look at me and suddenly know about Cuba and my involvement in the Missile Crisis? It takes a lot of coaxing to remind myself that I’m the one that can read minds and auras, not them.

Besides, I’ve kept myself a secret my entire life. I can continue to do that now.

The drive to Cambridge, Massachusetts takes three hours, but it feels like ten. I sit in the back seat of the Cadillac, restless and fidgety, and Hank keeps shooting glances at me through the rearview mirror. He and Charles both decided to come send me off. They would have had to both come, anyway, because Charles wouldn’t not come and there would be no way for him to get back if he and I had driven up alone.

All my nerves and fears are washed away at the sight of the campus. Dozens of historic brick buildings that look like they were plucked straight from England, hundreds of students, such a vast campus set out over a couple of blocks that I’m sure I’ll get lost the moment I set foot outside on my own. Charles gently informs me that this is, in fact, Harvard University. I slump back in my seat and pout as Hank makes his way to a rather smaller campus, composed of maybe eight buildings, more west of the main campus.

The girls’ dormitories are a set of apartments on Brattle Street. My room is on the second floor, and there are no elevators in the building so I have to carry my bags up myself. Charles at least waits outside of the car; Hank stays in the driver’s seat, swathed in the shadows of the convertible top, with a large hat and his collar popped to hide himself as best he can. He wouldn’t let me make him normal again. He says if he stays Beast, he’ll have better motivation to perfect the serum.

I locate room 203 and discover I have a roommate that has already moved in. A bright, bubbly, blonde-haired girl with blue eyes that reminds me a lot of Raven as she jumps up and says, “Hey! I’m Samantha!” in a really high-pitched voice.

“Hi,” I say awkwardly. “I’m Leah.”

“Welcome to Radcliffe,” she says. “First semester?”

I glance down at the two large bags in my hand. “Yeah.”

“It’s my second. You’re going to love it here. Come on, I’ll help you unpack.” Samantha reaches forward to take one of my bags. I cringe away for fear that she’ll touch my hand, but she’s hardly deterred as she swiftly takes the handle without making contact.

“That’s all right,” I say. I’m not used to humans being so forward, and I have to remind myself that to her, I’m just another human, too. “I’ve got a couple more things to get from the car, anyway.”

Samantha suddenly looks up, glances at me, and then tilts her head to the side, as if to look around me. “It’s not _your_ car, is it?”

“No, why?”

“Students aren’t allowed to have cars,” she says.

“Don’t worry, it’s not mine.” I turn to leave and Samantha bounds after me down the hall, like a puppy. I roll my eyes.

“So, where are you from?” she asks.

“Um, New York.” I speed down the steps, hoping she’ll fall behind, but she just matches my pace.

“Oh! Where in New York? My parents have a summer place in Southampton.”

“Westchester.”

“Oh, the country! I hear it’s lovely out there. I’m from Chicago.”

“Why didn’t you go to school out there then?” I ask, despite myself.

“Radcliffe’s such an esteemed college, that’s why–”

By this point, we’ve reached the Cadillac. I hadn’t wanted Samantha out this far for fear that she’d get nosy and try to look at Hank. At least the top is on and the windows are up. Charles rolls forward when he sees me.

“Find your room alright?” he asks.

“Yeah, and I found a roommate as well,” I say, jerking my thumb at Samantha, who gawks at Charles like she’s never seen someone in a wheelchair before. I accept her aura and find she’s not just taken aback by the wheelchair, she’s enchanted by his voice and his looks. I don’t blame her. Charles does look amazing when he cleans up, even if he wears simple dark pants and a blue cashmere sweater. He also trusted me enough to cut his hair, so just after Christmas I successfully gave him a haircut. He now looks very similar to the man I met in Brooklyn three months ago. “This is Samantha. Samantha, Charles Xavier.”

Finally, Samantha is speechless, but she manages to get out a shaky yet giddy, “Hello,” while she extends her hand to shake Charles’s.

Charles smiles and says, “Pleasure to meet you,” and Samantha practically melts. He turns to me and says, “I’d love to stay, but I think I should get going.” He subtly acknowledges the car, and I know he means they should get home for Hank’s sake.

“Okay,” I say sadly. I didn’t expect him to leave so soon. Now I really wish Hank had let me turn him normal again, so we could all go and have lunch or something instead of just driving up and leaving me here like they were dumping me on someone else’s doorstep.

I help Charles into the front seat. While I remove my last bag from the trunk and replace it with Charles’s wheelchair, Samantha notices Hank. I run back around as she asks, “Who’s that?” Charles and I exchange looks through the window, and he lifts his finger to his temple, preparing for trouble.

“Just the driver,” I say. “He doesn’t speak English.”

“Oh.” Samantha seems placated.

Charles rolls down the window halfway and sticks his head out. “I’ll call you when we get back, and we’ll write. You have the stationary and envelopes?”

“Yeah,” I say. “But I forgot stamps. It’s okay, I’ll buy some.”

Charles reaches out and touches my cheek gently. “You’ll do wonderful here.”

“Thanks,” I say. “I miss you already.” Hank clears his throat loudly. “And of course, I miss you, too, Hank.”

“Good-bye,” Charles says, and swiftly kisses me on the cheek.

“ _Au revoir_ ,” Hank grumbles sarcastically as he starts the car. Then they drive off, and I’m left alone again.

_February 27 th, 1963_

_Cambridge, Massachusetts_

I struggle through my first month of classes because it takes some getting used to, being back in school. I wasn’t a terrible student in high school but moving around so often definitely had a negative effect on my school work. I’ve always loved to read but hadn’t done much of it while on the run. Reading these past few months at the mansion definitely helped get the wheels in my brain turning again, but they’re far from moving at top speed. Day by day, I struggle through history and math, find sanctuary in literature, and actually relish biology and psychology because I have a reason to be interested in the human body and mind, and how it differs from mutants.

The majority of the girls in the school come from a rich background. Charles’s money and Raven’s clothes help me with appearances, but for the most part I keep to myself because if there’s one thing that will give me away, it’s my mouth.

Since the girls come from wealth they’re often more concerned with their looks than their schooling. They spend the weekends with their hair in curlers, running from dorm to dorm, chattering and gossiping about the boys from Harvard, who’s taking who to Amherst or New Haven for a date Friday night, what dress should they wear to the dance.

There’s so many dances at this college it’s unbelievable. There’s class dances, club dances, junior and senior proms, sophomore tea dances, Christmas dances, and spring formals. There was a start-of-term dance and a Valentine’s Day dance that I got out of by saying I had a terrible headache for one and was suffering with bad menstrual cramps for the other. My headaches do seem to be increasing now that I’m in school (which I figured out was because I didn’t have my shield up anymore), so the first one wasn’t a complete lie. However, my body seemed to punish me for lying about my period because halfway through the evening I actually did start to get cramps.

Other than that, we girls seem to stay in a mild state of euphoria. We’re right at home in the dorms, where our lives are luxurious by modern undergraduate standards. We have private rooms, cleaned and tidied by tolerant Irish maids, a laundry called for our dirty clothes to be picked up every week and returned carefully washed and ironed. We eat off of china in our own dining room and sit in drawing rooms that resembled those of a good women's club. It was all new to me, but it wasn’t hard to adapt to the opulent lifestyle.

Charles and I write to each other once a week. I haven’t yet heard from Alex or Sean, but I received one letter from Hank just a few days ago to let me know how Charles is getting along. Every time I get a letter, my roommate Samantha bombards me with questions about who it’s from, is it that handsome man that brought me here, is he going to come back and visit, does he have a girlfriend, is he rich. I got so annoyed by her questions that by the fifth letter from Charles I learned my lesson and started waiting for the mail myself in the lobby and reading the letters down there, and only daring to write back if Samantha was nowhere in sight.

_March 8 th, 1963_

_Cambridge, Massachusetts_

I lie on my bed in my dorm reading through a psychology textbook when Samantha stumbles in, breathless and pink-cheeked from the cold weather outside. It stopped snowing last week, but it hasn’t gotten any warmer.

“You’ll never believe who asked me to the St. Patty’s dance!” she squeals as she removes her scarf and coat.

I lazily look up from my book and read her mind. “Joshua Picard.”

Samantha scowls at me. “I don’t know how you always guess right. Do you have eyes and ears I don’t know about?”

“You could say that,” I mumble as I lick my finger and turn the page.

“Anyway, some of the girls and I are going shopping this weekend for dresses. Want to come?”

“No, thanks.”

Samantha sits on my bed. I reluctantly shift my legs over so she has room. “Why do you always avoid dances or getting together with the other girls?”

“I just need to study, that’s all. Professor Bard’s exam is coming up.”

When she doesn’t reply, I lift my eyes and find her staring at my bedside table. She reaches over and takes the tiny, framed photograph that I took at Christmas with the boys back in the mansion.

“It’s not because of him, is it?” she says, tapping Charles’s face in the picture.

I snatch the frame away and set it back on the table. “No,” I say, when really it is.

After another long pause, Samantha says in a low voice, “It’s not because you…like girls, right?”

I snap my book shut and glare at her. “Just because I don’t date and prefer to do well in my classes than go to some stupid dance doesn’t mean I don’t like boys!”

“All right, all right. Just, the other girls and I were curious…” Samantha sees my face and jumps off the bed. “You’re just anti-social, then.”

“Yeah, let’s go with that.”

Samantha takes a magazine and curls up on her own bed. I reopen my textbook and find my page. I stare at the words, but I’m too pissed off to focus. Stupid fucking girls.

_April 21 st, 1963_

_Cambridge, Massachusetts_

Today is Charles’s thirty-first birthday. I would never guess it, because he doesn’t look a day over twenty-five. I wait until around ten o’clock in the morning to call him and wish him a happy birthday, even though I mailed him a card and a lovely letter last week. I really do miss him.

_April 29 th, 1963_

_Cambridge, Massachusetts_

Just before exams start I receive a long, detailed letter from Charles that makes me infinitely excited. Construction for the mutant academy has been going on for a month and a half now, and so far, the entire inside of the mansion has been redecorated, transformed into dormitories and classrooms.

As I suspected, building the underground training facility will take quite a bit longer than Charles and Hank originally thought. It saved them a lot of time and landscaping when Hank came up with the brilliant idea to have the hangar for the jet underneath the basketball court that will slide open when need be. Charles asks me for any ideas I have about what to add to the grounds, so in my reply I list all of the things I would enjoy doing if I were a student at Xavier’s School.

My original plan at the end of term was to go back home, but I soon found out that I could take summer classes at Radcliffe and immediately signed up. Not a moment has gone by since I started college that I haven’t missed the mansion and Charles and Hank, but I figure the quicker I get done with school the faster I can be home with them forever.

_August 14 th, 1963_

_Cambridge, Massachusetts_

I’ve never been one for celebrating my birthday. I never really cared if I was a year older or not. The other girls in the dormitory used my birthday as an excuse to throw an extra fall dance, and they were all incredibly shocked to find out I’m twenty-five. Most of them thought I was still eighteen. That did make me feel good, I guess.

Where I’d really like to be right now, though, is Westchester. To be back with Hank and Charles, where Charles would most likely bake a cake or let Hank attempt to make it, and depending on how it’d turn out we’d either enjoy it or laugh at the mess it became and end up eating ice cream from the freezer. My longing to be back home gets stronger the more time I spend here at Radcliffe. Sometimes I wonder if I even made the right choice going to college, but I can’t let homesickness get the better of me.

_September 7 th, 1963_

_Cambridge, Massachusetts_

Hank calls me today to thank me for the birthday card and letter I sent him. He’s now twenty-nine. All I can think is, everyone is getting older, growing up, and I’m living all alone in Massachusetts, miles and miles away from the only family I’ve ever known.

_November 22 nd, 1963_

_Cambridge, Massachusetts_

I wake up before the sun with an odd sense of foreboding. I kick off the covers of my tiny bed and put on slippers and a bathrobe, then creep out into the hall. On the balcony of the second floor I stare out into the dawn, observing the sky, the nearby buildings, Harvard Plaza. Something doesn’t feel right.

I’ve been at Radcliffe College for ten months now. The summer course helped keep my mind running and now I seem to be in the groove of things. If I had taken the summer off, I probably would have just set myself back.

The only awful thing about staying the summer was that I haven’t been back to the mansion. When my mind isn’t consumed with work I think about Charles constantly, about the progress of the school, when we can start bringing in students. The first order of things for the underground facility was to build the new Cerebro, that way Charles could use it to locate students. He says it should be ready sometime in January.

With the Thanksgiving holiday just around the corner, I’ll get to go back home. I already have my train ticket purchased, the departure date set for next Tuesday. I wish I could leave now, though, because this feeling of foreboding just intensifies as the morning dawns. I have an urge to call Charles, but he’ll probably say I’m just stressed. I’ll talk to him about it next week.

Fridays are my lightest days for school. I just have advanced biology lab in the morning, which normally lasts until lunchtime. I go back to my room and gather my toiletries. I get ready slowly, showering, brushing my teeth, dressing, making sure my schoolwork is together. The entire time I can’t shake this feeling that something terrible is about to happen.

After a rather uneventful biology lab, I head back to the dormitories for lunch. I walk slowly, enjoying the impending winter breeze. Up in my dorm, I dump my books on my bed and Samantha and I head down to the dining room with the dozens of other girls.

“You’re quiet today,” Samantha says while she cuts her pork chop into pieces.

“Aren’t I always?”

“Well, you’re more quiet than usual, I should say.”

I push steamed baby carrots around the mashed potatoes on my plate. “Don’t you feel sort of off today?”

“Kind of. I’m more bloated this month than I usually am–”

“Not like that,” I snap. “I mean, like something bad is going to happen.”

“No, not really.”

I spear a carrot and dip it in the gravy. I wonder why I’m feeling this way.

I don’t have to wonder for long, though. About fifteen minutes later a girl that I don’t recognize bursts into the dining hall, panting as if she had been running. I feel her aura, the horror and shock radiating from her, before she even speaks.

“The president’s been shot!” she screams, and a silence falls over the room. “President Kennedy is dead!”

Everyone is on their feet in seconds, rushing out of the dining hall and over to the parlor where the only TV in the building is. Someone changes it to NBC, where news coverage of the assassination is being broadcast live.

It’s complete pandemonium in Dallas, Texas. The girls talk so loud I can’t hear what’s going on, but I don’t need words to understand the footage of the president’s head exploding with the force of a bullet.

I get up and leave the parlor alone. Wander up to my room on shaky legs. I felt it. This was the bad thing I was anticipating. How did I sense it, though? What connection do I have to President Kennedy that would allow me to make that correlation?

The answer is: just one.

Maybe an hour later, the phone in our dorm rings. I rarely get calls so I figure it’s for Samantha. I let it ring out and after a moment’s silence, it rings again. Annoyed, I pick up the receiver.

“Hello?” I grumble.

“Leah!”

I sit up straighter. “Charles?”

“Did you see the news?”

“About the president? I think everyone saw that.”

“How long did you watch the report for?”

“Just a couple of minutes. It was so strange, Charles. I woke up this morning as if I knew something horrible was going to happen. I wanted to call you, but–”

“Leah, listen to me. They found who shot President Kennedy.”

“Wow, so soon?”

“If you had kept watching the news, you would have seen him there...They show him, just as he…” Charles’ voice fades. I hear his ragged breathing on the other end as he struggles for words. I’ve never heard him so upset.

“Charles? Charles! What happened?”

“It was Erik. Erik killed the president.”

_November 26 th, 1963_

_Westchester County, New York_

I expected my return to the mansion would be a cheerful one. Instead, it’s dampened with the cloud of knowledge that Erik killed President Kennedy. The press is having a field day with the information, weaving wild stories and horrendous accusations now that it’s a definite fact that mutants with strange and dangerous powers exist, and exist as their enemy. How else could a bullet have curved through the air before it pierced the president’s skull? We all know too well how Erik has a way with bullets.

Charles seems especially distraught with the news. He blames himself more than he blames Erik. He thinks that if he just did something different before Cuba, Erik would have never gone down this path.

Personally, I don’t know what reason Erik had for killing the president. He killed Shaw; he got his childhood revenge. He left us in order to form a new society of mutants because humans wouldn’t accept us. Did he think assassinating the president would make humans accept mutants faster? All he did was strengthen the negative view that mankind has on us, which started with Shaw and the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Once again, Erik is the reason our Thanksgiving isn’t festive.

_November 28 th, 1963_

_Westchester County, New York_

“Please eat something, Charles.”

“I’m not hungry.”

“But you haven’t eaten in two days.”

“I said, I’m not hungry.”

I sigh and put the plate of food on Charles’s nightstand before leaving his room. I thought last Thanksgiving was bad; this one takes the cake. At least Charles got out of bed last time. Now he’s locked himself in his room again.

I find Hank in the kitchen washing dishes. The remains of our pitiful Thanksgiving dinner have been packed away in the refrigerator. I take a dishtowel and dry the clean dishes that Hank sets on the rack.

“He’s fading again,” I tell Hank quietly.

“I know.”

“We can’t let him get as bad as last time. We need to do something, find something for him to work on. I thought the school would help keep his mind occupied…”

“We’re working on Cerebro right now, but it’s not coming along as quickly as we’d like it to be.”

“Why not?”

Hank rinses off a pan and hands it to me. “This Cerebro is about sixteen times the size of the first one I built. It’s just slow progress. The shell of the room is complete, so we’re working on perfecting the actual mechanism itself now.”

“Isn’t there any way you could finish faster? Get it done before January?”

“Not if we want this done correctly. I won’t take any chances on Cerebro if it means jeopardizing Charles’s abilities.”

I take a handful of silverware and shake the water off over the sink. “If this school isn’t up and running soon, I’m not sure if we’re going to have much of Charles left to jeopardize.”

“Even if the school was done by next year, I think we’re going to have a hard time finding staff and students after what happened with the president.” Hank gives me the last plate and shuts off the water.

“I doubt that,” I say slowly. “I think it could be a safe haven for the children, like Charles intended, if mutants are going to become targets.”

“Do you think their parents would let them come to a school where the headmaster used to be best friends with the president’s assassinator?”

I shrug. “Maybe some won’t have a choice.”

_January 20 th, 1964_

_Cambridge, Massachusetts_

It’s the first day of my third term at Radcliffe College, not including the summer session. Now that Charles’ health is declining again I’m even more determined to finish school so I can get back to him.

The winter holiday was slightly more enjoyable than Thanksgiving, but nowhere near as cheerful as last year. We finally heard from Alex and Sean. They updated us with status of their Infantry Division, but all I cared about was that they were still alive. We sent them plenty of Christmas gifts and wishes of them being with us.

To my surprise, I advanced two levels in math and found myself in one of the highest classes Radcliffe has to offer. If I had known I had such talent for education, I’d have tried to go to college sooner. Even with all the brainiacs, though, I still don’t properly fit in. After what happened to the president, though, I’ve got reason to keep to myself more than I had been before. It’s incredibly ridiculous to think that anyone would find out what I am, but the fear is still there in the back of my mind.

I doodle on the corner of my notebook while Professor Richardson’s lesson drones on and on and on. I already read this chapter on the train back from Westchester, so I take to sketching or staring out of the window, daydreaming. Besides worrying about Charles, my current thought of the morning is: Do mutant genes affect mental capabilities? Both Charles and Hank are extremely well educated; they graduated Harvard before they were eighteen, Charles went off to gain multiple doctorates, and Hank was one of the youngest members of the CIA. Now, by some miracle, I’ve surpassed all of the students at Radcliffe College, and the dean told me at the end of last term that if I kept my grades up I would be in the running for valedictorian of my class. Wouldn’t that come as a shock in the future, for Radcliffe College to have the first ever mutant valedictorian.

_March 1 st, 1964_

_Cambridge, Massachusetts_

“Leah! There’s a letter here for you!” Samantha sings as she waltzes into our dorm room, brandishing a cream-colored envelope. “It’s not that swirly writing that your dreamy friend writes in, though.”

“I’ll just take my letter minus the commentary, thanks,” I say, and hastily rip open the envelope. If it’s not from Charles, it’s either Hank or my boys overseas.

It turns out to be from Hank. I hastily scan his childish scrawl while Samantha attempts to read over my shoulder. She’s so goddamn nosy. But I get the gist of the letter.

Cerebro is officially completed, and they had their first successful test run with it two weeks ago. The finished machine seemed to spark the dying fire of life inside Charles, and now he’s completely devoted to searching out students to join his academy. He doesn’t want to just send them letters or fliers, either. He purchased a private jet that he and Hank will use to visit each potential child and invite them to join Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters.

Hank included a picture of Cerebro and the completed swimming pool and basketball court. He said Charles loved my idea to restore the stables, and when I come back after term he wants me to help him choose horses.

The first line I write back to Hank – because it’s Hank, and not Charles – is: _How much money does Charles have???_

Two weeks later, Hank writes me back. His response to my question is: _Charles’s net worth is three and a half billion dollars._

_May 2 nd, 1964_

_Cambridge, Massachusetts_

A year and a half into my college schooling I finally meet another mutant. Quite by accident, honestly. I sit under a tree in the courtyard, watching the students during a break from studying, and occasionally reading their minds out of boredom. My mind settles on one person in particular, and I feel like seeing her put our future into motion.

She walks with a boy who pesters her about a date. Her aura throws off waves of irritability, which doesn’t surprise me, except when I try to read her mind I just get images of a blinding light. I recall what Charles said the day we met, how stress and high emotions can trigger our abilities, and realize if she can’t control herself she’ll let loose right there in the courtyard.

I quickly stuff my books and papers haphazardly into my schoolbag and dash off across the grass. I reach her and the boy just as she says heatedly, “I said no, Andrew!”

“Hey, Alison!” I say loudly, waving frantically. “I have those notes on _20,000 Leagues Under the Sea_ you let me borrow, and I had a question–”

“Back off, all right? We’re having a conversation here,” Andrew says hotly.

I look Alison in the eye and project my thoughts to her. _My name is Leah. I’m a mutant, too. If you don’t calm down, you’re going to expose yourself._

Alison’s green eyes widen, and after a quick moment, she catches on. “Oh, hello. What was your question?”

“It was just about your summary of–”

“Man, this is whack,” Andrew says, interrupting me again. “I’ll see you later, Alison.” And he stalks off.

Alison smiles gratefully at me. “Thank you.”

“No worries. He was being an asshole, anyway.”

She pushes her bangs out of her eyes. Her hair is black and cut short, like a pixie. I’ve never seen such a boyish style on a girl before. “So, you’re a–” she glances around the courtyard and lowers her voice, “–mutant, too?”

I nod.

“Wow,” she says. “I’ve never met another one before.” Her eyes shift to the ground. “I really didn’t know there were any others, until a mutant killed the president.”

“Yeah, he kind of killed the mutant vibe as well, didn’t he?” I say, attempting lightheartedness when really my heart is as heavy as a rock at the mention of Erik. “Are you staying on campus?”

“Yes. It’s my first semester.”

“Oh, that explains why I’ve never seen you before.”

Alison shrugs. “Do you…know any more?”

“Mutants?” I say, and find myself smiling. “Yeah, I actually live with two of them back home.”

“Wow,” Alison says again, this time with a bright smile and a look of wonderment on her face. A look that I know very well – the look that says, my life is about to change, and maybe for the better.

Later that evening, I scarf down my dinner and rush back up to my dorm so I can call Charles before Samantha gets back. I’d write him a letter, but I’m too excited to wait.

I sit impatiently on my bed, cradling the receiver against my ear with my shoulder so I can pick at my nails while the phone rings. Finally, Charles picks up.

“Charles, you won’t believe what happened today!” I practically yell in the phone.

“Hello to you, too,” he says.

“Sorry, hello, Charles. I miss you. But listen, I met this girl today. Her name is Alison Blaire. She’s one of us. Charles, I think I found your first student! She converts sonic energy into various forms of light, like laser beams and even holograms. Isn’t that incredible?”

Charles is quiet. I thought he’d be excited. “How old is she?”

“Eighteen, I think.”

“Hmm. You know, I’m open to mutants of all ages joining my academy, but if she’s already started her education at Radcliffe, I don’t think we should take her away from that.”

“Can we at least tell her about the school? Give her the option to join?”

“You know that I’m not opening the school until January. Construction should be finished by then, and maybe at that point I’ll have a full staff and the ability to branch off into college-level academics.”

“You’re completely killing this for me,” I mutter.

“I apologize. But we’ve got to be practical.”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“In the meantime, you’ve gained a new friend, haven’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Well, that’s good.”

Just then, Samantha comes into the room. My heart sinks.

“I’ve got to go. I’ll talk to you later, okay?” I tell Charles sadly, and hang up the phone.

_June 15 th, 1965_

_Cambridge, Massachusetts_

I have the dorm to myself this summer because Samantha decided to take the time to vacation to Italy with her parents. I lay sprawled on the floor with all the letters I’ve received from Charles and Hank spread out before me.

Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngster’s has been officially open for five and a half months. Charles has only managed to get one more staff member and two students to join. His last letter was short, but I could feel the pain in his words. He thought by now he would have a full staff and a houseful of mutant students, but instead the place just seems empty. I had written back and told him to be patient, that Rome wasn’t built in a day.

Hank seems a little more optimistic about the school. It’s now easier for him to go with Charles to recruit students because he’s officially perfected the serum and is able to use it like a medication to help keep his Beast form under control. If he gets angry, the Beast will emerge, but as of now he’s only had reason to be happy. The school is on track, he’s normal again, and he’s decided that now with all his free time, he’s going to start developing a serum to help with the voices in Charles’s head, something that I had asked him about a few years ago. Now that he’s got the proper equipment in his underground lab, he thinks he can actually make a breakthrough.

I organize the letters, with Charles’s most recent one on top, and touch the words he’s written. I miss him so much, and letters and phone calls and visits a few times a year just aren’t enough. But if I keep going on the path I’ve set out, I should be finished with Radcliffe College and graduated with my four-year degree by this time next year, a semester earlier than planned.

I lock the wooden box of letters just as Alison knocks on my open door. “Ready to go to lunch?” she asks.

“Yeah.” I tuck the box away under my bed and grab my purse. “Let’s go.”

_March 8 th, 1966_

_Cambridge, Massachusetts_

It’s my last semester at Radcliffe College and I can just taste the freedom. Everything in my life seems to be going perfectly. My grades are superb, I’ll be graduating early, I’ve now got two mutant friends that I spend the majority of my waking moments with, and Xavier’s School has been filled to capacity for six months.

My weekly letters to Charles stopped months ago. Slowly, they faded to once every two weeks, once a month, once every few months. His letters became shorter, too, but I just figured it was because he was busy with the school. Hank’s letters stopped altogether. I hardly let it dampen my spirits, though, because all I have to do is complete one final semester and then I’ll be with them in person.

I sit in the shade in Harvard Plaza with Alison and Peter Rasputin, a young Russian boy that just started at Harvard this semester. Peter’s got the coolest power I’ve ever seen. He transforms into this living organic metal that grants him superhuman strength and near-invulnerability. Alison and I found him as he was being beaten up in an alley next to his school. His pain and frustration was so strong that I felt it a whole street over.

I read his mind and saw what he was about to turn into, so Alison quickly used her power to convert the noise from the passing cars into this incredible bright white light that blinded the older boys just as Peter transformed. The boys ran off yelling that they lost their eyesight. Peter just stared at Alison with an open mouth and said, quite shyly, that she dazzled him with her abilities. From then on, Peter only called her Dazzler, and Alison responded by nicknaming him Colossus. Nostalgia flooded my body at the reminder of mutant nicknames. Havok, Banshee, Mystique, Beast…

“What do you guys plan to do this summer?” Peter asks us.

“I’ll probably just take a summer course so I don’t have to go home,” Alison says.

“Sleep,” I respond tiredly.

Alison seems sad. “Oh, that’s right. You’re graduating.”

“But you’ll know where to find me.” I had told Alison and Peter about the school a few weeks ago, at Charles’s okay. “And Charles said you’re welcome there any time.”

“I might take him up on that offer when I’ve graduated,” Peter says thoughtfully.

_May 3 rd, 1966_

_Cambridge, Massachusetts_

It’s Sunday night. The day before my final week of school. Just six more exams and then I’ll be the freest, happiest mutant in the world. The majority of my bags are packed and waiting at the foot of my bed with everything that I won’t need for this last week. My walls have been stripped of posters and pictures and bestowed to Samantha, because I couldn't care less if I take them home.

“Oh, I’m going to miss you so much,” Samantha says for the tenth time today.

“Yeah, I’ll miss you too,” I say, slightly begrudgingly. Samantha is nice and all, but she’s also incredibly nosy and annoying.

“It’s not fair that you got here after me and you’re graduating before me,” she pouts.

“Skip the next couple of dances and then maybe you’ll catch up,” I say teasingly, and she sticks her tongue out at me. “I’ll be back. I’m going to shower.”

I emerge from the showers a half-hour later in my fluffy pink bathrobe and shower sandals. The door to our room is open and I hear Samantha talking from down the hall.

“–call you back – oh! Never mind. Here she is.” Samantha covers the end of the phone with her hand and whispers, “It’s for you.”

I toss my bag of toiletries on my bed. “I figured. Thanks.” I take the phone from her and say into the receiver, “Hello?”

“Hey, Leah. It’s Hank.”

“Hey, Hank. What’s going on?”

There’s silence on the other end of the line. I faintly hear shallow breathing through the static.

“Hank?”

“You need to come home,” he says in a trembling voice.

“Now? I’ve got one week left. What’s wrong?”

More silence. And then: “It’s Charles.”


	10. Happy Fucking New Years to Me...

_May 4 th, 1966_

_Cambridge, Massachusetts; Westchester County, New York_

People sometimes say that when they receive bad news, their world seems to stop. It also tends to happen when you witness something horrible because my world seemed to stop that day on the beach in Cuba when I watched Erik send a bullet into Charles’s back. At least I was with Charles, though. I could hold him in my arms whether he lived or died. It was nothing like being trapped two hundred miles away from him while Hank told me that he might have killed him.

This was the only thing on my mind while I endured the frightfully long train ride from Massachusetts to New York.

I catch a cab from the train station to take me to the mansion. I haven’t seen it since it became fully operational last January. I’m not too excited now, though, when Charles’s life hangs in the balance.

I’m not excited, but I definitely wasn’t prepared for the sight of the place when the cab drives through the gate at the edge of the grounds, between the two pillars on the side like I imagined and the plaque I had made for Charles posted on the right. As soon as we break beyond the trees I see nothing but neglect.

The grass hasn’t been mowed. The plants haven’t been pruned. In just the short amount of time that I’ve known it, the fountain in the gravel roundabout emptied and has been taken over with weeds. I half expected kids to be running around on the brand-new basketball court, or swimming in the pool that is now filled with leaves and dirt, or shooting bows and arrows at the burlap targets across the lake. I really wasn’t expecting this.

“Looks like no one’s home. Are you sure this is the place?” the cab driver asks me.

“Unfortunately, yes,” I say quietly. I hand him a few bills and exit the cab with my single bag. I left everything else in my dorm as I rushed to the train station this morning.

The cab drives away and I walk up the three steps to the porch and the grand front doors that were once so familiar to me. I try the handle but it’s locked. So, feeling like an outsider, I knock.

Hank opens the door a crack. Behind his black rimmed glasses, I see his hazel eyes observe me in a swift second, and then he opens the door wider. I push past him. He closes and locks the door behind me

“Where is he?” I demand.

“In his room. I got him breathing again, but he’s still unconscious.”

“ _What happened?_ ” I hiss as I round on Hank.

“It – it was the serum,” he says. “For a moment, it worked. I mean, after I injected him, it took a few minutes, and then he said he couldn’t hear the voices anymore.”

“So why is he unconscious?” I say so loudly, my voice echoes in the foyer.

“I – I don’t know. Really. I got the dose right, gave him enough for his weight. It should have worked.”

I stomp down the hall with Hank trailing behind me. “Isn’t this why scientists use guinea pigs?”

“Who else was I going to use, Leah? You? I would have needed a guinea pig that could _read minds_.”

We arrive at Charles’s closed door. I’m almost afraid of what lies behind. I slowly push open the door to reveal darkness. The drapes are closed. Lamps are on but various articles of clothing are thrown over them, dimming the light. There’s empty Scotch bottles and stacks of records and books and dishes scattered around, accompanied by the musty smell of dirty linen and oily hair.

And on the bed, lying on his back, looking quite peaceful despite the chaos of his room, is Charles. I run to his side and sit on the edge of the bed. I push his stringy hair – which is almost down to his shoulders now – off his forehead and run my fingers down his cheek. He hasn’t shaved. He hasn’t showered in God knows how long. He’s wearing loose pants and a holey shirt and a thin robe that I think was once red but is now so faded and dirty it’s an odd grayish-pink color.

“What the hell happened, Hank?” I ask. “Why are there no students? What’s happened to the school?”

“Charles closed it,” Hank says quietly.

“What? When?”

“Just after Christmas.”

I ball my hands into fists, unsuccessfully trying to remain calm. “In five months this place went to hell? Why didn’t you tell me what was going on?”

“He didn’t want to distract you from your studies.”

“So instead, you pull this shit and call me back home when I had one single goddamn week left of school?” I shout. “You two stopped writing to me, you didn’t call. You wouldn’t pick up the phone when _I_ called!”

“Charles insisted–”

“Oh, shut up, Hank, and grow a pair.” I put my face in my hands and fight back tears of frustration. I take slow, steady deep breaths until I’m calm again. “If you got Charles breathing, why do you need me?”

Hank takes a few careful steps toward the bed. “Well, he seems to be in some sort of catatonic state. Trapped within his own mind. It’s possible that the serum blocked himself along with all the other voices in his head.” He wrings his hands. He’s so different when he’s not in his Beast form. “I was thinking, you could go into his mind. Bring him back.”

“Four years ago, I would have thought you were insane,” I say.

“So, you’ll do it?” Hank asks worriedly.

“Of course, I’ll do it.” I look down at Charles and take his hand. “Leave us.”

Without another word, Hank exits Charles’s room and shuts the door behind him. I let out a deep sigh and try to think about what the hell I’m going to do.

First step would be to connect to Charles. I adjust myself on the bed, touch my fingers to his temples, and push my mind into his.

At first I get a lot of nothing. Almost like how it is after I’ve shielded his mind. That’s when I think, oh, that’s exactly what Hank did. He found a way to make the serum into my shield. Now I’ve just got to find a way to lift it.

Searching Charles’s empty mind is sort of like walking through an endless white room. You can see white around for miles and miles and you know nothing is there. But if you keep walking in any one direction, maybe you’ll happen to run into something.

And I do. After searching deeper and deeper into the white nothingness, I find Charles’s consciousness like a little black ball of fear. I poke at it, and it stirs.

_Charles_ , I say softly. _Charles, you need to come back._

There’s silence, and then a quiet, depressing, _No_ , accompanied by intense waves of anguish and sorrow, helplessness and failure.

_Please, Charles_ , I say, _I’m here now. You need to come back._

_What will I come back to?_ he says desperately. _There’s nothing for me there anymore! They’ve left me, I can’t walk, my school is a disappointment._

_You can’t stay locked away in your mind forever, Charles_. _You’ll wither away and die. I can’t lose you._

_This is where I want to stay. Just leave me be!_

With that final note, Charles succeeds in pushing me out of his mind. I squeeze my palms against his temples, trying with all my might to break through the steel barrier he’s constructed around his consciousness.

“No!” I scream. “Charles, goddammit!” I release his head and slink to the floor, burying my face against my knees as I start to sob.

“Hank!” I yell at the top of my lungs when I finally leave Charles’s room. “Hank!”

Hank comes running around the corner with a glass test tube and pen in his hands. “Did you do it?”

“No, I didn’t do it. He blocked me. Figured out how to use my shield.”

“I’ve got stuff on the burners downstairs, come back with me.”

We walk toward Hank’s underground lab. Down one of the halls, blended into the woodwork, is a secret door that reveals an elevator of cool steel. This elevator goes down one level and opens up into a vast, steel-gray hall that matches the color of the elevator. Straight ahead there’s a wide-open doorway that leads to Hank’s lab. Down to the left is an archway that leads to darkness. To the right is a door that takes up the entire space of wall to wall, ceiling to floor, and carved on it is a giant encircled X with a blue center the color of Charles’s eyes.

“It that…?” I begin.

“Yeah, Cerebro.”

I follow Hank into his very professional lab. “Wow this place looks great. How did you even hear me from down here?”

Hank shrugs offhandedly. “When you yell, you project your thoughts as well.”

“Oh.” I sit down on a stool across from Hank and watch him examine different test tubes. “What are you doing?”

“Right now? Synthesizing more serum for me–” he acknowledges the containers of blue liquid “–and trying to figure out what went wrong with Charles.” He looks dejectedly down at a vat of thick, yellowish liquid.

“If Charles won’t come out willingly, we’ve got to force him,” I say through clenched teeth.

“As in make another serum?” Hank asks as he sits down on a stool. “I can’t start over from scratch. It will take too long.”

“What about regular medicine?” I suggest. “Stuff that doctors give patients they’ve put in – what are those – medically induced comas?”

He jots some notes down in the leather-bound book I bought him for our first Christmas. “Medically induced comas are brought on by a cocktail of drugs, the primary being anesthetic. Charles isn’t under anesthesia. I’m not sure if the drugs to bring someone back from that would work on him.”

“Have you tried throwing him in an ice bath? Shocking him into returning?”

“No. I didn’t want to do anything drastic until I got him breathing again.”

“Well, he’s breathing, so…I’ll go get the ice.”

I get up off my stool as Hank says softly, “Leah…” Reluctantly, I turn around to face him. “I know you’re upset with Charles, but think about what he’s been through. How much he’s sacrificed and how much he’s just plain lost.”

“Why did he close the school?” I ask. “I thought you had a ton of students.”

“We did,” Hank says sadly. “First we lost the majority of our staff and older students to the draft. The Vietnam War’s getting worse. People are scared. Parents who accepted their mutant children took them home. We didn’t have the capability to run the place like a school anymore, and Charles said he wasn’t running a hotel, so…he shut it down.”

I slowly shake my head the entire time Hank talks. “No, that doesn’t sound like Charles. He would never abandon children because he couldn’t teach them.”

“He’s not the same Charles, Leah.”

“Then we have to get him back,” I say determinedly. “So, what are we going to do?”

“If he’s refusing to come back to reality, we need to bring him down here. I’ve got a limited supply of medical equipment. I’ll hook him up to an IV, keep him nourished. Monitor his vitals. It’s all we can do until he decides to rejoin us.”

“I’m not leaving that choice up to him,” I say. “I’ll figure out a way to break through that barrier in his mind if it kills me.”

“Just make sure you don’t kill him…”

After Hank and I bring Charles down to his lab, which is a lot easier than I originally thought since apparently Hank’s perfected serum does just what he intended it to do four years ago – gets rid of the physical abnormalities while keeping his super Beast strength – Hank convinces me to go back to Radcliffe. Finish out the week’s exams. Find a way to make up for the two I missed today. If he’s got Charles stabilized now, there’s nothing for me to do. He was so convinced that I could bring him back with my mind, with my presence, but evidently, I’m not enough for Charles.

_May 5 th, 1966_

_Cambridge, Massachusetts_

“You’re back!” Samantha says exasperatedly when I enter our room. “What happened?”

“Just…family business,” I say.

“You missed two exams!”

“I know. I’ll go talk to the professors right now.” I check my watch. It’s nine forty-five in the morning. My advanced anthropology final is in fifteen minutes. “Or maybe after lunch…”

I grab my school bag and race out of the dorms and over to the campus. There was really no point in me coming back. It’s not like I’ll be able to focus on molecular genetics or the United Nations and international organization or theory of quantitative chemistry anyway. My mind will not be on my studies this week. No, it won’t. It will be on Charles and the way he’s sunk so low into himself that I doubt he will ever return on his own.

And it doesn’t look like there’s any way for me to bring him back, either.

_May 8 th, 1966_

_Westchester County, New York_

I struggled through my exams but I couldn’t care less how well I did. My grades were so high to begin with that I could have skipped the exams altogether and still passed the classes. But that would have meant that all the work I’d done since January of 1963 would have been for nothing, and I couldn’t throw all that away. Throw my life away like Charles is doing right now. I’ve already forgone my graduation ceremony and elected to have my diploma mailed to me just to be back with him.

Hank monitored Charles around the clock for the past couple of days. He connected electrodes from an EEG machine up to Charles’s forehead to calculate and study his brainwaves, but there hasn’t been any significant change. He says Charles is completely unconscious – his brain isn’t even registering sleep-wake cycles. Hank even had to hook Charles up to an oxygen tank because his breathing became shallow, as if there was some part of Charles that was determined to keep him under.

I sit on a stool at the head of the padded medical table Charles lays on in Hank’s underground lab while Hank slaves away over microscopes and beakers and bubbling liquids on burners. I advanced so far into chemistry during my time at Radcliffe that I could probably help Hank create a new serum for Charles, but I can’t pretend to be an expert in the field of mutation. All I can do is throw out suggestions here and there, based off of what I know about myself.

“I still haven’t completely given up on the ice bath idea,” I tell Hank after he angrily dumps a container of gray liquid down the sink.

“Drastically dropping his body temperature won’t wake him from this coma he’s in,” Hank says. “I’ve been working with propofol and an untested drug called zolpidem to concoct something that might wake him.”

“I’ve heard of zolpidem,” I say. “They talked about it in one of my chemistry classes. It’s new, but it’s supposed to cure insomnia. Make people go to sleep. How are you going to get it to wake Charles?”

“It’s all about understanding the molecular structure of the drugs that put people to sleep and figuring out a way to alter them to do the opposite,” Hank says.

I shake my head. “Seems like it would be easier to dump him in a tub of ice.”

“And give him hypothermia? No, Leah. We have to be practical.”

My heart does a sort of half-flip when I recall those same words coming out of Charles’s mouth two years ago. Now look how well that turned out.

“I’ll just try to break into his head again,” I say. I reach for the sticky electrodes on Charles’s forehead, and Hank stops me.

“No, leave them on. Maybe the EEG will pick something up while you’re in there.”

I shrug and place my fingers on Charles’s temples. Steel walls greet me. Undeterred, I search around and around the outside of his mind, looking for a weak spot, a fragile space I can break into.

As brilliant as Charles is, he’s also stubborn. He will keep up this charade as long as we let him. Well, I won’t let him. I’ll push and prod into his head until he finally cracks. And I’m determined to make him crack. I don’t care how long it takes. He needs to understand that I honestly don’t think that I can live without him.

_May 9 th, 1966_

_Westchester County, New York_

“Leah. Hey.” Hank shakes my shoulder and I slowly blink my eyes open. “Take a break, okay? You’ve been at it for hours.”

My head pounds so hard that my vision becomes blurry. “No, Hank. I’m almost in. Just give me a little more time.”

“It’s almost eight o’clock at night.”

“Wow, really?”

“I don’t think he’s going to budge, Leah. Let’s try this.”

I raise my weary head and see Hank holding up a single syringe of clear liquid. “You synthesized a drug to wake him up already?”

“No. It’s straight zolpidem and dopamine.”

“What? You’re giving him a cocktail that will contradict itself!”

Hank shakes his head. “It’s paradoxical, and that’s why I think it will work. Charles is about as out as they come. Nothing could put him under more. So, I think this drug will activate the neurons in his brain as it tries to put him to sleep.”

“Hank, that doesn’t make any sense.”

“Think about it. Neurons that use dopamine send massive modulatory projections to the prefrontal cortex that control our voluntary actions. With this dose, it might help restore a normal level of arousal in his brain. The zolpidem works on the multiple loops that link the cortical workspace network – the thalamus, and two of the basal ganglia. Well, within these loops, the cortex can indirectly excite itself. Two of these connections rely on inhibition rather than excitation through oxygen levels. If I were to give Charles dopamine and zolpidem, and increase the amount of oxygen to his brain, stimulating the inhibitors, it may force the basal ganglia cells to excite their hibernated state. I’ll be inhibiting inhibition.”

I pinch the bridge of my nose as I try to work through the load of information Hank just dumped on me. “Okay, wait a minute. These basal ganglia, that’s the, um–” I wrack my brain “–striatum and pallidum, right?” Hank nods. “The striatum inhibits the pallidum, and the pallidum inhibits the thalamus, correct?”

“Right. That’s why when the brain loses its oxygen supply, the striatum is the first to suffer. As a result, the pallidum is insufficiently inhibited. Because it’s no longer being blocked, it shuts down the thalamus and the cortex and prevents them from sustaining any conscious activity. That’s what’s going on with Charles right now. The dopamine will excite the cortex, and the zolpidem will bind to the many inhibitory receptors in the pallidum, forcing its overexcited inhibitory cells to switch off, thus releasing the cortex and thalamus from their unwanted quiescence.”

“Jesus, Hank, how’d you come up with this?”

“I didn’t graduate Harvard at fifteen for nothing.” Hank takes a tank of oxygen from a storage closet and replaces the almost-empty tank that Charles is hooked up to. He increases the flow to Charles’s nasal cannula to nine liters a minute and then reaches for the IV bag. He glances at me almost hesitantly before injecting the syringe of clear liquid into a branch off the main IV line.

With bated breath, we wait. The only sounds are the steady stream of oxygen from the tank and the slow, rhythmic beeping of the EEG machine as it records Charles’s brainwaves. The waves of the lines on the paper are long and shallow.

Then, after what seems like an eternity, the beeping increases. I sit up straighter and stare between Charles, Hank, and the metal rod on the EEG machine that is now wiggles with more intensity. The waves it draws on the paper are gradually condensing.

“Is it working?” I whisper.

“I…think so.”

There are now dozens of small, spiky peaks on the EEG paper rather than a singular, never-ending wave. I’m almost afraid to breathe. I take Charles’s hand and squeeze it between mine.

Behind closed lids, Charles’s eyes twitch. I gasp and Hank leans in for a closer look. Then, sluggishly, Charles’s eyelids flutter open and he lets out a soft groan.

“Charles!” I say breathlessly. Hank immediately flies into action, shining a pocket light in Charles’s now open eyes, taking his vitals. “Oh, Charles! We thought we’d lost you!”

Charles doesn’t say anything. He slowly looks at Hank, then at me, as if he’s seeing us for the first time. Then he squeezes his eyes shut, releasing tears that stream down into his ears, and covers his face with his hands.

_May 10 th, 1966_

_Westchester County, New York_

Charles has been sleeping – naturally – for nearly three hours now in his own bed that I put fresh sheets on this morning. Hank and I are in the kitchen, having lunch.

“I think I know what happened with the serum,” Hank says. “I thought about it last night, and I think if I–”

I finally finish chewing a bite of sandwich and say, “You’re going to continue making a serum after what happened?”

“Well, yes.”

I shake my head. “No. I think you need to stop. I’m here now. I’ll just shield his mind when he needs it.”

“He can’t always rely on you, Leah. If I make this serum work as it does for me, to where he takes just enough to keep him under control, it may be the best thing that ever happens to him.”

“And what if it just sends him into another coma? Or gives him the ability to lock himself away again?”

“I’ll just have to make it so it doesn’t.”

After we clean the kitchen Hank goes back down to his lab and I go to Charles’s room. I open the door without knocking.

Even though he doesn’t stir, I know he’s awake. I go over, open one of the drapes to let in some late afternoon light, and perch myself on the edge of his bed. Still, Charles remains unmoving. I reach out and touch his cheek, run my hand back through his hair. He is quiet, but his eyes close serenely and I hope, just slightly, he’s missed my touch as much as I’ve missed his.

“Charles,” I whisper. “Are you all right?”

He draws in a long, raggedy breath and exhales slowly. “Why did you wake me? Why did you remove the peace I had finally found?”

“That wasn’t peace, Charles. I was in your head. I felt it. You were still suffering.”

“But I was alone,” he says quietly. “I had no one to disappoint but myself.”

“You’re not a disappointment. Actually, you’re the exact opposite.”

Charles sits up so suddenly he has to grip his head and steady himself. “How can you say I’m not a disappointment? I’m an utter failure!” Charles’s blue eyes become shiny as they fill with tears. “Everything I built, everything I worked for, is gone. Just like everything else in my life.”

I try not to let his words cut me too deeply. “You’ve accomplished so much,” I tell him. “Just because the school isn’t ready to be run right now doesn’t mean you don’t have the ability to do it…eventually.”

Charles scoffs.

“And you’re not alone,” I continue. “You have Hank. You have me. And you know we would never leave you.”

Charles seems to weigh the options of how true or false this is. He reaches out with a shaky hand to caress my cheek. “I’m sorry,” he says weakly. “I’m so, so sorry for the way I acted.”

I place my hand on top of his. “You have nothing to be sorry for.”

Charles finds enough strength to get out of bed and shower and shave. I wait on his bed patiently while he cleans up in the bathroom.

He finally emerges in clean clothes. He rolls over to the edge of the bed and hoists himself out of his wheelchair and onto the mattress.

“I’m getting better at that,” he says.

“You are,” I agree. “Must be all that upper body strength.”

Charles smiles a faint, almost nonexistent smile. But at least he found a reason to do that much.

“Thank you for not giving up on me,” he says.

“I’ll always be here for you,” I respond in a whisper.

Charles pulls me toward him and I willingly drape my arms over his shoulders, run my fingers through his long damp hair as we delve into a passionate kiss. It’s been such a long time since I’ve felt his lips, and I was beginning to think I would never experience this again.

We fall gently back against the pillows, still locked together as if afraid if we let go, we each would disappear forever.

_April 21 st, 1966_

_Westchester County, New York_

I finally get to celebrate Charles’s birthday with him. It’s been three and a half years since I first met Charles and Hank, and I haven’t been able to spend a single birthday with either of them. For Charles’s thirty-fourth birthday, I plan to make a special dinner. We don’t exactly have friends to invite over, so it will just be me, Charles, and Hank, but really, we’re all we need.

I went grocery shopping yesterday because the pantries and refrigerator were oddly bare. Apparently, Charles hadn’t been eating and Hank was often so busy locked away in his lab that he forgot about meals. Not anymore. The inexperienced chef is back in town.

The cookbook Alex got me for Christmas three years ago proves to be my savior. I follow it diligently, as if it were the Bible, reading and re-reading the recipe for Chicken Valdostano, a chicken skillet dish with prosciutto ham, fontina cheese, and a white wine mushroom sauce. If this works out, it will be my best dinner yet.

My favorite part about cooking this dinner is repeatedly taking a meat mallet to the chicken breast halves in order to pound them thin. I get so carried away that I draw Hank from his underground lab, and he asks if I’m trying to beat down a wall. It wasn’t for nothing, though, because the chicken turned out tender and juicy.

I end up with a little more than half of the chopped mushrooms I started out with because sautéed mushrooms are my most favored food, and I kept eating them out of the skillet before it was time to make the white wine sauce. Eventually, though, my main entrée is perfection.

My cake, however, doesn’t turn out so well. My first one, that is. I completely forgot about it and missed the kitchen timer while I was preoccupied with flouring the chicken breasts and making sure I didn’t burn the white wine in the pot. But hey, what can I say. It’s me. One burnt cake and a successful dinner is a victory for me.

I didn’t have a lot of time to look for a gift for Charles, but I did happen to stop at a bookstore while I was out grocery shopping. I found a beautiful first edition copy of T.H. White’s _The Once and Future King_ and, after convincing myself that no, Charles doesn’t have enough books, I buy it for him. And I was right to. He loves it.

But Charles loves Hank’s gift more. Hank had been working day and well into each night on the serum for Charles. He based the formula primarily on my DNA, focusing on my cellular similarities with Charles because there might be a chance that Charles’s body wouldn’t reject it if it had structural parallels with his own DNA. What Hank created, essentially, is a miracle.

I’m skeptical at best as the three of us go down to Hank’s lab after dinner. Charles’s chair fits easily in the doorway of the elevator. They were careful of that when designing the underground facility.

“I don’t think this is a good idea, Hank,” I say as I sit down on a stool along a counter of glass vials.

“I need to try it,” Charles says anxiously. “The voices are getting worse. I can’t control them like I used to. I haven’t slept properly in months.”

“That’s why I’m supposed to shield your mind,” I say.

“I can’t have you there every night.”

Even though it’s true, it hurts hearing the words come from Charles himself. I watch as Hank helps Charles onto the padded medical table and connects the EEG electrodes to his forehead and starts an IV.

“At least we know what counteracts the coma if Charles were to slip into one again,” Hank says. “But I highly doubt that will happen this time.” He holds up a syringe of bright gold liquid. “Are you ready?”

“As I’ll ever be,” Charles says, extending his arm slightly as he closes his eyes.

Hank takes a deep breath, chances a glance at me, and then connects the syringe to the IV in Charles’s arm. I watch as the thick, gold liquid leaves the syringe and disappears into Charles’s veins.

“Talk to me, Charles,” Hank instructs him gently. “I need status updates.”

“All right, well…” Charles fidgets around. “I can still hear the voices.”

Hank takes his leather-bound notebook and jots down notes, muttering to himself as he does. “Six forty-seven. Serum administered. Six forty-nine. No change.”

“Wait–” Charles says, his eyes flying open. “Something’s wrong.”

“What is it?” Hank says, and I leap off my stool and run to Charles’s other side.

“They’re fading,” Charles says quietly. “The voices, they’re fading, but–”

“But what?” I repeat frantically.

Charles’s breathing becomes heavy and labored. His hands clench and unclench into fists and he squeezes his eyelids shut, as if he’s trying to shut us out. A fine sweat breaks out on his brow as he shakes and shivers.

“Hank, what’s going on?” I ask.

“I – I don’t know–” Hank grabs the paper off the EEG. “Brainwaves are normal.” He takes a stethoscope and jams the ends into his ears and places the diaphragm on Charles’s chest. “Heart rate is elevated. Almost two hundred beats per minute.”

I grab Charles’s clammy hand. “Charles? Are you okay?”

As Charles gives out a loud yell that echoes throughout the lab, his eyes burst open, wider than I’ve ever seen them. His pupils are so dilated the blue is almost completely obscured. His yell cuts off abruptly as he grits his teeth, and after another minute of unexplained agony, Charles lies still.

“What just happened?” I whisper to Hank. But he’s not paying attention. He’s staring at Charles’s legs. My eyes trail down Charles’s torso, his hips, and down to his right leg, where his foot twitches. “Oh, my–”

“Tell me I’m not dreaming,” Charles says hastily. “Tell me I’m not imagining that sensation in my legs.”

“Are you trying to move it?” Hank asks.

“Yes!”

“Charles, you’re moving your foot.”

Slowly, Charles inches his head off the table. As he raises his head, he jiggles his foot. An exasperated cry escapes from him.

“I can feel them!” Charles props himself up on his elbows and Hank and I immediately try to push him back down, but he won’t have it. “Let me sit up.” Charles pushes himself into a sitting position and slowly, slowly, bends his right leg up. Then his left. “This is incredible.”

“It is,” Hank agrees quietly, completely shocked. “I need to take your blood, Charles. Run some tests. Maybe take you to the doctor and get an X-ray of your back.”

Charles turns and lets his feet dangle off the side of the table. He happily swings them back and forth while Hank prepares a syringe. After he takes a few vials of blood, he removes the IV and tapes a cotton ball to the inside of Charles’s elbow.

“I want to try walking,” Charles says, and before Hank and I can stop him he leaps off the medical table, lands on his feet for a brief second, wobbles violently and then falls to a heap on the floor. Hank and I silently help him to his wheelchair.

“You haven’t used your leg muscles in years, Charles,” Hank says. “You need to take it slow.”

“I suppose you’re right,” Charles says sadly.

Whether Charles takes it slow or not, there’s only one thought spinning around my head right now: Charles can walk again. He doesn’t hear the voices. The main things that have held him back all these years are finally gone. Maybe now that he’s gained the use of his legs and serenity within his mind, he can start to rebuild his life. Maybe now, he can finally heal.

_July 14 th, 1966_

_Westchester County, New York_

I have never been more wrong. I thought Hank’s serum would heal Charles, but all it did was push him further along down the path of self-destruction. After nearly three months of being able to walk on his own, Charles has decided that his functioning legs are best used for scouring the mansion for liquor.

Little did we know that when the serum took the voices away, it took his power away as well. Charles thought it would be a good thing to lose the company of the thousands of others he’s had for twenty-two years, but all it’s done is locked him alone within his own mind with the memories of how horrible his life has become.

A school he spent three years building lingers as a constant reminder to his failure. He wanders the halls, looking into classrooms and bedrooms that were once filled with children. A time that I didn’t even get to witness.

Wandering the empty mansion only reminds him how before it was a mutant school, it was a training facility, and he’s constantly plagued by the memories of Alex, Sean, Moira, Erik, and Raven. All of our friends who are now gone.

Alex and Sean are still in Vietnam, and even though we haven’t received word from them, there hasn’t been a visit from the Army or a wooden box with their bodies on our doorstep, so that’s a good sign. Charles took Moira’s knowledge of us, and even if he wanted to bring her back, just to have a familiar face of the past again, he’s lost the power to do that.

And then there’s Erik. Charles’s once true friend who betrayed him, abandoned him, took the one thing that meant the most to him. Raven hasn’t called. Hasn’t visited. Not even after Erik was locked up in a prison miles below the Pentagon after killing the president. It hurts Charles to think that she might have had something to do with that, too.

Charles can’t feel me in his head whenever I decide to check in on him. Touching his mind is almost like visiting an empty shell, because that’s what Charles has become. But even though he’s as miserable as he is right now, it was nothing compared to how he was before. That’s why he never misses a dose of the serum.

Hank stays in his lab, synthesizing serum for him and Charles, experimenting, building the stealth jet. Occasionally I go down to the underground facility and sit in the hangar underneath the basketball courts while Hank works. It’s better than staying on ground level and watching Charles waste away yet again.

_August 1 st, 1966_

_Westchester County, New York_

“Morning, Hank,” I say tiredly as I walk into the kitchen and pour myself a cup of coffee. I wearily spoon sugar and cream into the mug.

“Good morning,” Hank responds, but it doesn’t sound like a good morning at all. A cloud of darkness has fallen over the mansion, and while Hank has his work to occupy him, my life has become almost as empty as Charles’s head.

“Long night?” I ask, noting the dark circles under Hank’s eyes that he tries to rub away.

“As always,” he says.

“Why do you work so hard? We’ve got nothing to be working for.”

“That’s exactly why I do it,” Hank says. “Because I’ve got nothing else to do.”

“Hmm,” I say, and down half of the scalding coffee in an attempt to gain a caffeine rush. “Charles still in his room?”

“No, actually. He went outside about twenty minutes ago.”

My eyes widen. “I’m not sure whether I’m more shocked that he’s awake before noon or that he’s stepped foot onto the grounds.”

Hank just raises his eyebrows as if to say, _Yeah, me neither._

After I finish my coffee, I head out one of the back doors and wander around the mansion searching for Charles. It’s a beautiful morning, with a clear blue sky and a light autumn breeze. I inhale deeply as I walk along the grass that’s still dewy from the cold night.

I find Charles in the empty stables that once held six gorgeous horses for a short time, running his hand along the polished wood of the pens. He refuses to shave again, and he wears a dark checkered bathrobe over his pajamas. He hardly wears anything else anymore.

“Do you miss them?” I ask him.

He jumps slightly before turning around. I often forget that without his powers, he’s more susceptible to being snuck up on.

“Sometimes,” Charles says. “I used to ride a lot as a child. When we bought the horses again, I had to push away the memories of how it felt to ride. That freeing sensation, almost like flying.” He walks toward me, his fingers brushing the thin, wooden posts along the gates. “Now that I could do it again, I don’t have them anymore.”

“You could always buy another horse.”

He looks at me contemptuously. “Why? Just to be rid of it again when I neglect it?”

I’m fed up with Charles’s cynicism. “You don’t have to be so pessimistic, Charles. It’s your life. You’re choosing to wallow in self-pity.”

“Do you think this is what I wanted?” Charles says, his voice rising. “Do you think I wanted to lose everything?”

“No, but it doesn’t mean you can’t work to get it all back.”

“How can I get it back, Leah? Tell me, please. Because I don’t know how. How do I erase the past? Stop Raven from leaving me? Stop Erik from turning down a dark path? Stop my school from becoming just another empty mansion?”

“You can’t change the past, Charles. That’s why you’ve got to make a bright future. Change what’s going to happen later.”

“If you could be inside my head, you’d understand why I can’t do that, either.”

I grab the sides of Charles’s face and, even though he can’t feel me, I press my mind into his. “I am inside your head, Charles. I can see and feel and hear everything you endure, just like you used to be able to with everyone else. I know what you’re going through.” Charles tries to push away from me. I don’t let him. Instead, he closes his eyes. “I don’t think you understand how much it hurts me to see you like this. To watch you fade away again.”

I project the memory of the day Charles gave me my first driving lesson into his mind. The conversation we had when I told him it was okay to ask for help. When I tried to say how much he meant to me but I couldn’t get the words out.

“I said I would love you no matter what,” I tell Charles quietly. “And I do. But that doesn’t mean I’m just going to stand by and watch you do this to yourself.”

Charles lifts his eyelids, revealing those bold, blue eyes that I love so much. Eyes that, no matter how much he’s suffered, will always be bright.

“I often forget how much you care,” he whispers.

I lower my hands from his face to the sides of his neck. With my thumbs, I gently caress his cheeks. Then, I lean forward and close the tiny gap between us, touching my nose and forehead to his. I feel his hands on my waist, his breath on my cheek as he runs his lips along my jawline and over to my mouth.

And then his lips find mine, and suddenly we’re locked in a wild, passionate kiss like I’ve never had before. As I run my fingers through his long hair his hands lift my shirt and brush along my back. That’s when I realize that along with the use of his legs, he gained the use of other things as well.

Charles pulls my shirt over my head; I push the robe off his shoulders. In moments, we’re completely undressed and lying on the pile of clothes on the stable floor. I get lost in the moment of just Charles and I.

Afterwards, after our bodies are no longer warm, we hurriedly dress and go back inside. I would have liked to stay out there with him for a little while longer, but it was just too cold. Serves us right for making love outside, I guess.

I feel like I’ve been greatly rewarded for never having resented Charles being paralyzed. There was a part of me that, deep down, always wanted Charles in this way, but I knew him for such a short time before he was shot that once he was paralyzed, it was almost natural to not think about it.

_August 14 th, 1966_

_Westchester County, New York_

It’s almost ironic that Charles is now able to sleep on his own without the voices disturbing him at all hours of the day when for the past two weeks we’ve done very little sleeping. I’ve abandoned my room on the third floor and taken up one of the bedrooms on the second floor with Charles – on the opposite side of the mansion from Hank, of course. It’s easier for Charles to wake up in a new room. I’m just happy to be waking up next to him.

On this day in particular, I’m woken with a light kiss that tickles my mouth because Charles still won’t shave or let me cut his hair. Almost as if he’s afraid he’ll fall back into his old habits and need the scraggly look at a moment’s notice.

“Happy birthday,” he says with a small grin.

I yawn and stretch. “Oh, right. I’d almost forgotten.” I’m twenty-eight today. Thank God for mutant genes keeping us looking young, or I’d freak out that I’m almost thirty.

“Yeah, right,” Charles says with a short laugh. “I may not be able to read your mind anymore, but I still can tell you’re excited.”

“You never could read my mind before,” I remind him. “Nothing’s changed.”

He shrugs, accepting this. His comment, however lighthearted his intentions, seemed to force him to recall his ugly past, and he lays back against the pillow, staring at the ceiling blankly. I sigh and wonder if this cycle will ever end.

_December 31 st, 1966_

_Westchester County, New York_

We don’t celebrate New Year’s Eve. We don’t celebrate much of anything anymore. I rarely see Hank. I see Charles because we spend every night together, though we hardly speak to each other. It’s not because we’re busy making love as if it’s the only thing that keeps us sane, either. We don’t have much to talk about these days, and I’ve found myself slipping into a depression much like Charles has. Depression by association. There’s nothing to live for anymore.

Charles and I drink a lot. I’m not sure if it’s helpful or more disheartening to have someone to get wasted with. It really just proves how useless we’ve become as mutants, as living beings. For over four months I tried to stay positive, keep Charles positive. On multiple occasions, I suggested starting up the school again, but even if Charles wanted to he could no longer locate mutants. Not without his power. All he’d have to do is stop taking the serum long enough for its effects to wear off, but not even the thought of the school flourishing could outweigh his obsession of a voiceless head and functioning legs.

I once asked Hank if I could try Cerebro, see if I could use it just as Charles had, but he advised me against it. Charles had an exceptionally strong telepathic mind and was able to tolerate Cerebro. I probably wouldn’t be able to handle such magnitude, being that my telepathic skills aren’t as developed.

After that, I just gave up. Indulged in the stupor Charles seems to enjoy so much. Everything has been fine now. Who would have known just giving up would be so easy to do?

I drain the last of my whiskey and shudder. “I don’t feel so good.”

“Why? You haven’t had much,” Charles says.

“I know. Doesn’t mean that I don’t feel well.” I rub my stomach. “I think I’m going to be sick.”

Charles laughs dauntingly. “Can’t hold your liquor now?”

“Shut up,” I tell him, and run for the bathroom. I make it to the toilet just in time to see everything I drank over the past few hours reappear in the bowl.

I flush the toilet and lay down with my cheek against the cold tile. I have to admit, I feel better now. I’m just curious why I got sick. I’ve drank way more than that before and never even had a hangover. Could just be my empty stomach rejecting the whiskey.

But I’ve learned enough about the human body to know that it might not be that simple. The more I consider what it might be, the faster my heart races until my stomach lurches so violently I feel like I’m about to throw up again.

I push myself up off the tile and stagger into the bedroom, but I don’t go back to Charles. I aim for the door.

“Leah?” Charles calls. “Are you all right?”

“Don’t know…”

I make it down the stairs in one piece. I turn right, down the long hallway. Fumble a little bit when I reach the secret door to the elevator. Feel like throwing up again as it shoots downward. Stumble across the steel gray hall to Hank’s lab, where he still works even though it’s late at night.

Hank’s head shoots up at the sound of me knocking over a plastic jug on the nearby counter that I lean on for support.

“Leah? What’s wrong? You look sick.”

“Hank, can you – are you able to–”

My eyes fill with tears and my throat tightens, cutting off my words. Hank jumps off his stool and hurriedly helps me to a chair.

“Can I what?” he asks.

But I can’t say it. I can’t get the words to form on my lips. I project my questions and fears into Hank’s mind. His eyes widen.

“Yeah, of course…” Hank digs through some drawers and returns with a syringe and tourniquet. I don’t watch as he prepares the needle, straps the length of rubber around my upper arm. I cringe as the needle penetrates my skin, and then remind myself cloying that it’s not the worst pain in the world compared to what might be coming…

“It takes about two hours,” Hank says after he’s covered the puncture hole on the inside of my elbow with a cotton ball and tape. “Why don’t you go upstairs. Get some water. You look awful.”

“Thanks, Hank,” I mumble as I make a slow progression out of the underground lab.

Somehow, I find my way to the kitchen. Manage not to break the glass as I fill it with water from the sink. Slowly, slowly, I drink the entire glassful.

I wait out the longest two hours of my life on the bottom step of the staircase in the foyer and all I can think is: What am I going to do?

_What am I going to do?_

Finally, after what seems like ten years, I hear the secret door to the elevator slide open. Hank appears in the hall, looking forlorn.

“I can’t–” I begin weakly, choking back tears.

Hank joins me on the step and rests his elbows on his knees. “Let me know when you’re ready.”

I run my hands along my face and back into my hair, gripping it for dear life. “Just tell me. Get it over with.”

“It’s positive,” he says quietly. “You’re pregnant.”

The giant grandfather clock in the foyer strikes midnight and lets out twelve deep gongs that vibrate in my bones and down to my very soul. Hank puts a comforting arm around my shoulders as I start to cry.

Happy Fucking New Years to me.

_January 3 rd, 1967_

_Westchester County, New York_

I think the hardest part about this entire ordeal will be telling Charles. The second hardest part will be figuring out how two depressed near-alcoholics are going to raise a child.

After I told Charles that I was pregnant, he retreated to his old room on the first floor and locked himself in it for two days. I stayed by Hank’s side, finding comfort in his presence, even though he couldn’t offer much more than that.

When Charles is composed enough to talk, we sit in the lounge room on a sofa in front of a blazing fire. He stares at the flames while I wait patiently for him to speak first.

“We’re in no position to have a baby,” he eventually says.

“I know. But what can we do?”

Charles shrugs his shoulders as he shakes his head. “We can’t keep it.”

“What?” I say loudly. “I know we’re in a shitty situation right now, but that doesn’t mean I can just get rid of our baby–”

“We’re unfit parents!” Charles hisses at me. “We can’t raise a child when we can’t even function!”

“Then we get better–”

“Not to mention if someone finds out that two mutants have a child? If they turn on us, imagine what they’ll do?”

“Charles, we’re so secluded here. We don’t even leave the house. No one would ever know–”

“They _can’t_ know,” Charles says firmly. “That’s why we can’t keep it. I’m not saying be rid of it now, essentially. Maybe just give it up for adoption–”

“Are you forgetting where I come from?” I yell. “Have you forgotten that horrid past you saw in my head the day we met? I will not let a helpless child grow up the way I did if it has two parents that could care for it if they just got their act together!”

But Charles still shakes his head, refusing to see reason.

“You know, I knew you had given up on yourself long ago, I just didn’t think you could be this much of a heartless bastard.” I get to my feet and storm out of the room.

_June 13 th, 1967_

_Westchester County, New York_

I don’t know whether it’s because I endured these last six months knowing that Charles does not want this baby or that my own body knew I couldn’t keep it in the long run that I have the worst pregnancy ever. I spent most of the past eight weeks in Hank’s lab, hooked up to endless tubes and machines, in a drug-induced torpor, as he tried to keep my body from rejecting the only thing that I have to live for right now.

My due date is at the end of the month. We’ve avoided hospitals because if they ran tests and somehow found out that I wasn’t human, they’d do something to me or the baby for sure. But Hank’s in no position to deliver a baby, either, so as the days draw nearer to the end of my pregnancy, we scramble for what to do.

_July 1 st, 1967_

_Westchester County, New York_

I wake up in Hank’s lab with the bottom half of my body soaking wet. I uneasily prop myself up on my elbows and try to see over the huge mound that is my belly.

“Hank!” I scream. “Hank!”

There’s a deafening crash from across the room. I look over and see Hank on the floor in a pile of glass from some lab equipment he just shattered when he jerked awake at the sound of my voice.

“What?” he ask worriedly as he makes his way over to my side. Then he sees what I can’t on the lower half of my body. “Oh.”

“I’m not ready for this!” I shout. “What am I going to do? I can’t do this! You can’t do this! Hank!”

“Okay, okay, calm down,” he says in what’s supposed to be a soothing voice. “I mean, delivering a baby can’t be that hard–”

“FOR YOU!” I scream at the top of my lungs as a contraction wracks my body.

“They do home births all the time,” Hank says as he wanders around in circles, gripping his hair. “I’ll just do what they do–”

“Well, if you’re done figuring out what _you’re_ going to do, I’m going to start shoving a freaking watermelon out of my body!”

“Right, right.” Hank runs around the lab, gathering supplies. “I don’t have towels or anything down here. I’ll be right back–”

“Don’t leave me!”

Hank touches my arm. “I’ll only be a moment,” he says before disappearing around the corner.

In just a few minutes Hank returns. But he’s not alone. He and Charles appear in the lab, carrying piles of linen.

“What are you doing here?” I ask weakly as my body is overcome with another contraction.

Charles glances sideways at Hank, as if he’s not sure why he’s there, either.

“You two need to stop acting like children if you’re about to have one,” Hank says sternly. “Charles, get those towels in hot water.” Hank comes to my table and drapes a sheet over my body. His face flushes red. “You’ll want to remove your underwear,” he tells me bashfully.

“Right.” I try to lower my soaking wet panties from under the gown, but between the contractions and my belly and my odd position on the table, I have a hard time. “Uh, will you help–”

Hank’s eyes double in size as they drift to the sheet. “Um – well, I –”

“You’re going to see a lot more if you’re going to deliver this baby,” I tell him.

Hank gingerly reaches out with a shaking hand just as Charles yells, “Oi! I’ll do that!” He stomps over to me.

“What, now you want to be involved?” I say through gritted teeth.

Charles’s lips turn white as he purses them together. He ignores me and reaches under the sheet. There’s a wet _plop_ when my underwear fall to the floor.

Hank takes his place, now carrying a thick volume about child birth and delivery. “So, we’re going to have to see – uh – how far along you’re…open.”

I let out a groan of pain the same time I realize I don’t want Hank’s fingers shoved up inside me. “Don’t you touch me.”

“Someone’s got to!” Hank says, and we both look expectantly at Charles, who glances around in the silence as if he was trying not to listen to us.

Charles points to his chest. “Who – me?”

“Can’t be any different than what we used to do,” I tell him, and Hank’s face goes a brilliant shade of scarlet.

“Fine,” Charles says reluctantly, and takes his position at the end of the table.

“Okay, there’s a chart here that shows how to measure the cervix,” Hank says, leaning the book in Charles’s direction. “It’s about four finger’s width–”

“You’re going to put your whole hand in there?” I shout.

“Apparently, I’ve got to,” Charles says, peeking under the sheet. “Oh, fuck.” He lifts the sheet higher and pulls a trembling Hank next to him. Now I feel incredibly awkward as the two of them stare between my open legs.

“There shouldn’t be that much,” Hank says as he madly flips through the pages in the book. “Charles, get a towel.”

“What’s going on?” I demand.

“You’re bleeding,” Hank says.

“Well, yeah. I thought that was normal – ow!” I grip my belly. “Hank, that wasn’t a normal contracti– _aaaahhh!_ ” I scream through the searing pain that starts from deep within my lower abdomen. “What’s – happening?” I manage to gasp.

Charles shoves the sheet aside and presses a white towel between my legs. In seconds, he’s removed a bright red lump of cloth.

“Oh – my god.”

I black out.

I don’t know what time it is when I finally come to. All I know is I’m incredibly drugged up and I feel empty.

My fuzzy vision finally adjusts and I see that I’m on a bed in one of the second-floor bedrooms. I’m in a clean gown and I’ve got a light sheet covering me. I sit up and notice an IV attached to my arm, linked to a bag of dark red liquid. Blood.

“Take it easy,” says a soothing voice from the shadows.

“Charles?” I say faintly. “What happened?”

Charles emerges from the darkness and slowly sits down on the bed, being careful not to shake the mattress too much. “After you passed out, Hank had to find a way to get the baby out.”

“What did he do?” I run my hand along my belly and feel the lumpy mass of bandages. “He cut me open?”

Charles nods. “We didn’t know what the hell we were doing. We were scared. But we got her out, eventually.”

“Her?” I repeat. “It’s a girl?”

“Yeah,” Charles says, and allows himself a faint smile. “She’s beautiful.”

“Where is she?” I ask.

“Down in the lab. Hank’s watching over her, making sure she’s all right.”

“Should I go to a hospital? Get her and I checked out?”

Charles opens his mouth and then closes it uncertainly. No, we can’t go to a hospital. Not if we want to keep her hidden. That was the reason I wasn’t in one in the first place.

“She’ll be safe here, you know,” I say quietly. “We don’t have to give her up–”

“Leah,” Charles says quietly, taking my hand.

“No,” I say, slightly louder. “No, we can’t let her go. It’s stupid. It’s selfish.”

“It’s for her own good,” Charles says. “Hank already ran her blood. She’s got the X-chromosome, too. The mutation gene. If she grows up away from this place, there’s a chance she could live stress-free and not trigger her mutation.”

“If she grows up here, she wouldn’t have to hide or be afraid. She could be a student, an X-Man. Isn’t that the whole point of the academy? So mutant children wouldn’t have to be afraid of what they are?”

“There is no academy, Leah,” Charles says. “And there may never be. It was a mistake to start it, to think I could manage something that big.”

“But you can,” I insist as I fight back tears. “We could run it together. Be a family.”

“I’m sorry, love.” Charles leans down to kiss my forehead and then he resumes his place in the shadows.

For what I’m sure is not the last time, I cry over the loss of the baby girl that I will never know.

_July 5 th, 1967_

_Westchester County, New York_

Today is the day I give up my daughter. She’s a beautiful little bundle of joy. She’s got bright blue eyes just like Charles, and a red tint to her peach fuzz brown hair that looks about the shade of Charles’s beard. I wonder if she got anything from me, but I’d much rather her look like Charles.

In an attempt to reconcile with me, Charles and I sit in the lab together, watching her sleep, and attempt to come up with a name. We already agreed to have her take on the last name of the couple adopting her. That leaves the first name to us.

“Annabelle?” Charles suggests. We’ve been at this for hours, and neither of us have come up with something we even slightly agree on.

I shake my head. “No. I don’t want her to end up with some stupid nickname like Bella. What about Sophie?”

“That’s a dog’s name,” Charles says as he scrunches up his face. “Kimberly?”

“No, I don’t like how it sounds. Jennifer?”

“Lisa.”

“She doesn’t look like a Lisa.”

“She’s three days old. She doesn’t look like anything.”

“Karen.”

“Julie.”

“Angela.”

“What about Jean?” Hank suggests as he appears in the entrance of the lab.

“Jean?” Charles says, playing with the name on his lips.

“Jean,” I say. “I sort of like it. What’s the adoptive couple’s last name again?”

“Grey,” Hank says.

I meet Charles’s eyes before we both look down at our daughter and say softly at the same time, “Jean Grey.”

_September 23 rd, 1968_

_Westchester County, New York_

I never held Jean for the frightfully few days she was mine. I was afraid that if I did, I would never be able to let her go. It was already hard enough leaving her at the Grey’s house. It was just me and Hank that dropped her off. Charles couldn’t find the energy, the courage, to take part in the hardest day of my life. I never thought of him as cowardly until then.

Over a year later, I still miss her. I didn’t only lose her that day, I lost Charles as well. He used to be such a strong, caring man. Now he’s become hardened and bitter. Only this time, he knows that yet another person in his life he lost came at his own hand. I understand why he did what he did, though, in making us give up Jean, and that makes it all the worse.

Not three months after Jean was adopted, there was a report on the news of an anti-mutant group that murdered the newborn twins of a mutant couple in New Jersey who were brave and stupid enough to give birth in a hospital. Hank showed me the report in an attempt to make me feel better about what Charles did, but all it did was remind me that even in his never-ending inebriated state, he’ll always be right. And I can’t live with that.

_January 23 rd, 1973_

_Westchester County, New York_

It’s been four and a half years since Charles and I gave up Jean. I have to admit, it’s gotten easier at this point. I spend so many of my days drunk that I often don’t even think about her. I know she’s in a good home, though. Not like the awful places I lived in when I was younger. That’s the only thing that gets me by.

Charles and I hardly speak to each other. I’ve gone back to living in my room on the third floor. Charles resumed his on the first, and when he’s not passed out in his stepfather’s old man cave, that’s where he sleeps.

Both of us have gotten closer to Hank on separate terms. Now that I don’t have Charles to fill my days I usually stay with Hank in his lab. He’s taught me how to make the serum for himself and Charles and lets me help with the jet sometimes. It keeps me motivated to stay off the liquor.

One day, about two years ago, Charles accidentally gave himself a double dose of the serum and found that the effects were even better. Since then, he’s been going through the stuff twice as fast, spending his days locked away in a sort of drug-like trance. And me, who once said I would never leave his side no matter how bad he got, just about abandoned him. If I didn’t have my own problems in my head then maybe, just maybe, I’d be able to help Charles with his.

End of Part Two


	11. Back to the Future

**PART THREE**

_The future: a dark, desolate world. A world of war, suffering,_

_loss on both sides. Mutants, and the humans who_ _dared to_

 _help them, fighting an enemy we cannot defeat. Are we_ _destined down_

_this path, destined to destroy ourselves like so many_

_species before us? Or can we evolve fast enough to_

_change ourselves...change our fate? Is the future truly set?_

_January 24 th, 1973_

_Westchester County, New York_

Life has an odd way of throwing curveballs when you least expect it. In the past ten years, I’ve gotten a fair few of them myself. Meeting Charles and Erik in Brooklyn and changing my future. Watching Charles get shot on the beach in Cuba. Going to college. Getting a dreaded phone call detailing how the man I love may be dead. Watching that man survive a near-death experience, just to live out his days as if his soul had departed instead. Finding out I was pregnant. Giving birth. Giving the baby up. None of that really compared to what happened this fateful Wednesday in January.

Charles is up in his stepfather’s man cave, like usual. Hank tries to coax some soup into me in the kitchen. He doesn’t understand that the only reason I’m not eating it is because he made it, and it tastes awful. Not because I just don’t care to eat anymore.

That’s when there’s a loud knock on the front door. Hank and I exchange glances, with expressions that say the same thing: _Who the hell could that be?_ We haven’t had visitors in years.

I follow Hank to the foyer on legs like lead. I’ve been so tired lately. I wait by the banister of the stairs while Hank approaches the front door. He unlocks it and peeks through the tiny crack he’s allowed it to open.

“Can I help you?” Hank says to the stranger that I can’t see.

“Uh, yeah. What happened to the school?” says a low, growling sort of voice. Almost like how Hank’s was when he was Beast, only smoother.

“The school’s been shut for years,” Hank says. “Are you a parent?”

The stranger scoffs. “I sure hope not. Who are you?”

“I’m Hank, Hank McCoy,” Hank says uncertainly. “I look after the house now.”

“You’re Beast?” the stranger says astoundingly, and Hank shoots an inquisitively worried glance back at me. “Look at you. I guess you’re a late bloomer.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, but I’m going to ask you to leave.” Hank attempts to shut the door, but there’s a loud thump as the stranger’s arm hits the wood. I stand up straight and brace myself for a fight.

“So, where’s the Professor?” the stranger asks.

“There’s no Professor here,” Hank says as he struggles against the door.

The stranger gives the door a hard shove and Hank returns it in an effort to get it closed all the way.

“You’re pretty strong for a scrawny kid,” the stranger says in a light tone. “You sure there’s not a little Beast in there?”

“No, he’s not here–”

“Hank?” I whisper.

“Come on, Beast,” the stranger taunts with a laugh. “Come on, Beastie–”

“No!” Hank shouts as the stranger gives a hard shove and bursts through the door.

I stare at the burly, muscular man that propels his way into our foyer. He wears a navy blue patterned shirt tucked into blue jeans under a tan leather jacket. When he takes a step, his large, booted feet echo through the room. But his size and presence isn’t what strikes me. It’s his hair. Near-black, combed up to rounded edges. Mutton chops, bare upper lip. He stands there with a wolfish, animalistic air, and I can’t help but feel like I’ve seen him before.

“Hey!” Hank yells. “I said the school’s closed! You need to leave.”

The man observes Hank with one dark, raised eyebrow. “Not until I see the Professor.”

“There’s no Professor here, I told you that,” Hank says angrily as he grabs the man’s shoulder. But the man casually deflects Hank’s hand. He removes his sunglasses, revealing dark, piercing eyes that he narrows at Hank.

“Look, kid, you and I are going to be good friends.” The man swiftly punches Hank square in the face, sending him to the floor. “You just don’t know it yet.” He steps around Hank, who stares after him angrily, clutching his face and trying not to turn blue. It’s been a long time since his anger was tested.

“Professor?” the man yells in his growling timbre. “Professor!”

“I believe Hank told you there’s no Professor here,” I say. The man’s eyes stop searching the upper level and fall on me.

“Leah?” he says cautiously. “What–”

I narrow my eyes and project my thoughts into his. It takes some work since I haven’t had a need, or desire, to use my power in a very, very long time. I grip my head in pain as I try to make sense of the mess of this man’s mind. Nothing is focused as I zip through a seemingly endless supply of memories, accompanied by auras of loss, betrayal, anguish, happiness, love; it’s like I see snapshots of the past and what appears to be…the future?

“Logan?” I whisper, finding his name buried in the back of his mind.

“Look, I want to know why you’re here, but right now I need to find the Professor.” Logan runs up the first flight of steps three at a time and disappears. I wonder what he means.

All these repressed memories of train rides and bars and poker tournaments and motel rooms flood my mind. One bar in particular brightens in front of my eyes. Sonny’s Bar. And I was having a drink with Logan there ten years ago.

And he hasn’t changed a bit.

Hank lets out an incredibly threatening roar that snaps me back to reality, and I just manage to register a blue blur in a ripped red cardigan fly by my face and tear up the stairs at top speed.

“Shit,” I say, watching Hank’s Beast form round the stairs to the second level.

I debate on whether or not to follow them when Logan’s yell echoes through the mansion, and suddenly he goes flying from one end of the landing to the other. He lands on his back and groans. Seconds later Hank leaps across the landing and pins Logan to the stairs with a growl.

“Hank!” I shout as he effortlessly tosses Logan down into the foyer as if he were a rag doll. Logan lands on the decorative table in the middle of the entrance, which miraculously holds its form. That’s one sturdy table. Hank leaps off the banister, flies through the air and grips the chandelier with his blue furry feet, dangling above Logan with his arms raised to strike.

“What’s going on here?”

The voice sends chills down my spine. Upside down, Hank ducks his head to look up the stairs. I follow his gaze and see Charles descend slowly down the steps, looking disheveled in a tattered checkered bathrobe, half-empty glass of Scotch in his hands.

“Professor?” Logan asks curiously.

“Please don’t call me that,” Charles says in a deadened tone.

“Why? You know this guy?” Hank growls.

“Yeah, he looks slightly familiar. Get off the bloody chandelier, Hank.”

Hank dismounts gracefully and lands on the rug next to Logan. I massage my temples, trying to wrap my head around the most action this house has seen since 1966.

Logan stares at Charles in awe as he sits down on a step halfway down the staircase. “You can walk?” Logan asks incredulously.

“You’re a perceptive one,” Charles says sarcastically. He takes a sip of his drink.

“I thought Erik–”

“Which makes it slightly perplexing that you missed our sign on the way in,” Charles continues as if he hadn’t heard Logan. But I did. What does Logan know about Erik? “This is private property, my friend. I’m going to have to ask–” Charles gestures with his glass to Hank and I “–them to ask you to leave.”

Logan finally gets off the table and straightens his jacket, back to business. “I’m afraid I can’t do that, because I was sent here for you.”

Charles glances down at me, and I shrug.

“Well, tell whoever it was that sent you that I’m–” Charles looks around the foyer surreptitiously “–busy.”

“That’s going to be a little tricky, because the person who sent me was you.”

I exchange a questioning look with Hank, who shakes his head as if he’s already fed up with this nonsense, as Charles says skeptically, “What?”

“About fifty years from now,” Logan adds.

“Like, in the future, fifty years from now?” Charles asks.

Logan nods. “Yeah.”

“I sent you from the future?” Charles says with a doubtful laugh.

“Yeah,” Logan says again.

Charles’s smile fades and his face hardens. “Piss off.”

I sigh with relief. For a moment, I thought Charles was actually buying into this load of crap. But then, what were all those images of some dark, desolate world doing in the front of his mind? Surely no such thing exists right now.

And then there was the men, in a dark but oddly colorful room. Two old men, one tall, with graying hair, standing next to one with a perfectly shiny bald head, seated in a hoverchair. Men that I’ve never seen before but somehow seem oddly familiar…

“If you had your powers, you’d know I was telling the truth,” Logan tells Charles, causing an uncomfortable silence to hang in the air.

“How do you know I don’t have my – who are you?” Charles asks defensively.

“I told you,” Logan says vaguely.

“Are you CIA?”

“No.”

“You’ve been watching me?”

Logan shakes his head and puts his hands on his hips. “I know you, Charles. We've been friends for years. I know your powers came when you were nine. I know you thought you were going crazy when it started. All the voices in your head. And it wasn't until you were twelve that you realized all the voices were in everyone else's head. Do you want me to go on?”

Charles looks confused and a little bit shocked. “I’ve never told anyone that, except…” His voice trails off as his eyes settle on me.

“I didn’t tell him, Charles,” I say hastily.

“No, she didn’t,” Logan says. “You did.”

Charles scoffs lightly. “All right, you’ve piqued my interest. What do you want?”

“We have to stop Raven,” Logan says. “I need your help. _We_ need your help.”

At the mention of Raven’s name, Charles’s body goes limp. He sinks back against the stairs, his face full of pain, as he says quietly, “I think I’d like to wake up now.” He shakily gets to his feet and staggers back upstairs.

“What does she have to do with this?” I ask Logan.

“Everything,” he says.

“He’ll come around. Just give him some time.”

In the dissipated tension, Hank slowly fades from Beast to a thirty-eight-year-old man that doesn’t look a day over twenty-five. His serum and our DNA have kept us all looking like we’re still in our twenties.

Logan looks me up and down swiftly, as if he can’t believe his eyes. “He didn’t tell me you were here. That you’d been here before.”

“Who?” I ask.

“The Professor. I thought the first time you lived here was with me.”

“What the hell are you talking about? I’ve lived here for ten years. You were there the day Charles and Erik offered me the job you didn’t take. You knew I’d be with them.”

“I met Charles for the first time in two-thousand and three. You and I were brought to the mansion together. And you never mentioned that you used to live with the guy. I was under the impression you didn’t have any memory.”

The year 2003? It’s 1973! What game does this guy think he’s playing?

“Apparently, you don’t have any memory either, because we’ve met before,” I say. “In Brooklyn.”

“No, you’re right. I went through some shit…I didn’t know who I was at the time, and neither did you. I met you on a train. You had just esca–”

“Stop telling me my future,” I snap. I glance at Hank, who stands back watching us bicker. I press my fingers into my eyes, making white stars dance as I add more pressure. “I don’t care.”

“You should,” Logan says. “If we don’t succeed in what I traveled all this way to do, you won’t have much of a future to look forward to.”

“Where are you coming from?” Hank asks.

“Twenty twenty-three. And the world’s gone to hell because of something Raven did. That’s why we need to find her.”

“What did she do?” I ask.

Logan sighs. “It’s a lot to take in. We should wait for Charles. I don’t really want to explain myself twice.”

“You haven’t changed a bit,” I say.

“Neither have you,” Logan grumbles.

“What do you mean?”

“You’re still the same grumpy, sardonic, pessimistic person in fifty years. And it’s a miracle that you still look the same.”

“Haven’t you heard? Mutant DNA keeps us young. Look at you.”

“It lengthens our lives, that’s for sure. But it doesn’t keep us as young as you are in the future. It’s almost like you’ve got my regenerative ability.”

“But I don’t,” I say quickly. “And I never will have it. I can touch you, remember?”

“Yeah, I remember,” Logan says with a smirk that makes me think he remembers our brief time together in 1962. But how can he if, according to Logan, we don’t meet for another thirty years?

How is this all possible? As curious as I am, I refuse to go deeper into his mind. I don’t want to see how I’ll end up if my future involves this asshole instead of Charles.

“Why don’t we, er, go sit down,” Hank suggests, and without another word he turns and enters Charles’s old study. I follow him.

We sit in the two plush chairs in front of the large mahogany desk piled with trash and liquor bottles. Logan wanders in and observes the mess in the room with mild astonishment and a hint of recognition.

“Can you believe this?” I tell Hank in a low voice.

“Sort of,” Hank replies. “I mean, it’s not uncommon for mutants to possess the power to alter reality. It’s possible in the future there’s someone who has the ability to time travel. If this guy’s coming from fifty years into the future, though, I’m not sure why he looks like he’s only forty.”

“He’s got that regenerative ability.”

“Kitty only sent my consciousness back,” Logan explains gruffly. “She sent my older self, my older mind, into my body of nineteen seventy-three.”

“Who’s Kitty?” I ask.

“One of the X-Men from the future.”

Hank and I exchange glances, our eyes wide. “The X-Men survive?” Hank asks dubiously.

“Of course.”

There’s the sound of bare feet along wood floors as Charles drifts into the study with a now-empty glass. He wanders around the desk, searching for a bottle that’s not dry. He manages to find one and pours the remaining amber liquid into his glass.

“So…explain,” Charles tells Logan as he waves the empty bottle at him.

Logan sighs. “Bolivar Trask. Know the name?”

“No,” Charles and I say.

“He’s a military scientist,” Hank says. “He runs Trask Industries.”

“Yeah. Well, Raven kills him,” Logan says. “And we need to stop her.”

“Why?” I ask.

“Because the day Raven kills Trask, at the Paris Peace Accords, no less, they capture her. Trask Industries gets their hands on Raven’s DNA and they use it to build Sentinels,” Logan says. “Mutant-hunting robots.”

Charles frowns. “So, you’re saying they took Raven’s power and, what? They weaponized it?”

“Yeah.”

Hank sighs deeply. “She _is_ unique.”

Charles leans down to smile sadly at Hank under the lamp shade on the desk. “Yeah, she is, Hank.”

“In the beginning the Sentinels were just targeting mutants,” Logan says. “Then they began to identify the genetics in non-mutants who'd eventually have mutant children or grandchildren. They started targeting everybody. Many of the humans tried to help us. It was a slaughter, leaving only the worst of humanity in charge.” Logan shakes his head woefully. “I've been in a lot of wars but I've never seen anything like this. And it all starts with her.”

Charles crosses the study and falls heavily onto the battered old sofa, spilling a splash of his drink on his dirty white T-shirt. “Let's just say for the sake of...the sake, that I choose to believe you. That I choose to help you. Raven won't listen to me. Her heart and soul belong to someone else now.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I see Hank hang his head. It never occurred to me until this moment that Hank used to – or still does – have feelings for Raven, and it hurt him as much as it hurt Charles when she left. I’m such a selfish friend to have never bothered to ask Hank about how he felt when he’s always been there for me.

“I know,” Logan says. “That’s why we’re going to need Magneto, too.”

I choke out a sarcastic laugh and Charles smiles cynically.

“Erik?” Charles says. “Could you give me that one more time, please?”

“You heard me.”

“You _do_ know where he is?” Hank asks.

Logan scowls at him. “Yeah, I do.”

Charles’s mocking laughter cuts through the silence like a blade as he gets to his feet and heads for the door. He passes Logan and sneers, “He’s where he belongs,” before leaving the study.

“You’re just going to walk out?” Logan says.

“Ooh, top marks,” Charles jeers as he spins on his heels. “Like I said, you’re a perceptive one.”

“The Professor I know would never turn his back on someone who'd lost their path. Especially someone he loved.”

Charles narrows his eyes. “You know, I do think I remember you now,” he says, while he slowly advances. “Yeah. Tall, angry fellow with the contentious hair.” Logan glowers. “We came to you a long time ago, seeking your help. And I’m going to say the same thing to you what you said to us then.” Charles throws his face in Logan’s and spits, “ _Fuck off_.”

Logan reaches forward with two huge hands and grabs the front of Charles’s robe, shaking him angrily. “Listen here, you little shit,” Logan growls. “I've come a long way, and I've watched a lot of people die. Good people. Friends. If you're gonna wallow in self-pity and do nothing, then you're going watch the same thing. You understand?”

He shoves Charles away. Charles staggers until he regains his balance, then says with a pitiful half-grin, “We’ve all got to die sometime.” This time, when he leaves, Logan doesn’t stop him. Charles disappears up the stairs again.

I fold my arms over my chest. “We told you there was no Professor here.”

“What the hell happened to him?” Logan asks.

“He lost everything.” Hank gets to his feet and clears some of the empty bottles off the desk. “Erik, Raven, his legs. Their child,” he adds, nodding to me. I stare down at my lap.

“You have a kid?” Logan asks incredulously.

“Not anymore,” I whisper.

“We built this school, the labs, the whole place,” Hank says, gesturing with wide arms. “We had fifty, maybe sixty students. Then the war in Vietnam got worse. Many of the teachers and older students were drafted. It broke Charles. I wanted to help, we both wanted to help. So I designed a serum for him, to help with the voices. Make him relax. It’s derived from the same formula that helps keep my mutation under control, but uses Leah’s DNA instead of Raven’s. I take just enough to keep myself balanced, but…he takes too much. The treatment also gave him his legs, but it’s not enough. He’s just lost too much.”

I close my eyes, my throat tightens. I’ve been so consumed with myself these past few years that I neglected Charles. I blamed him for sending our daughter off when he was only trying to protect her, and I used that as an excuse to push him away. But where was he when _I_ needed him?

We hang around the study in uncomfortable silence, wondering what to do. Logan came bursting into our lives like a damn A-bomb and completely turned our world upside down with stories of mutant robots and time travel.

And what about me? I thought I was done with Logan. I left him as a memory in my past, never to be touched upon again. Now he’s here? He’s not even the same Logan, either! How is it that the Logan I knew isn’t the same Logan that’s standing here in front of me? I remember the bars, the drinks, smoking together after sex. Logan knows me as, what? An amnesiac runaway?

“Do you remember any of it?” I ask suddenly, looking at Logan. “Brooklyn? Meeting Charles and Erik in the bar?”

“No,” Logan says. “When we meet, thirty years from now, I don’t know who I am. We go through so much together, me and you. You, and Charles, help me find myself–”

“Okay, stop,” I order him. “Hank? What’s that time travel paradox? You know, the one about how if you go back and change the past you’ll alter the entire future?”

“Chaos theory?” Hank says. “It just says that a small change in one state of a deterministic nonlinear system can result in large differences in a later state.”

“Exactly,” I say, turning to Logan.

“You understand him?”

I scoff. “You don’t? You’re talking to me about a future that may not exist if you change something that happens in the past.”

“Well, we’re doing it for a good cause,” Logan says. “We’re going to save mutant-kind if we succeed. If I have to give you up to do that, then fine.”

“You’re acting as if you own me,” I say. “I don’t even know you.”

“You will,” Logan says.

Charles materializes in the doorway. We all turn to him as he sighs deeply. For a fleeting moment, his eyes dart between Logan and I, and I can’t read his facial expression. How long has he been standing there? Before I have the chance to decide if I’m going to read his aura or not, he says slowly, “I’ll help you get Raven. Not for any of your future shite, but for her.”

“Fair enough,” Logan says.

“But I’ll tell you this,” Charles continues hauntingly. “You don’t know Erik. That man is a monster. A murderer. You think you can convince Raven to change? To come home? That’s splendid. But what makes you think you can change _him?_ ”

Logan takes a careful step towards Charles. “Because you and Erik sent me back. _Together_.”

A thick silence, full of skepticism and disbelief, hangs in the air. I look at Hank, wondering if I even believe that somehow in the future, Charles and Erik reconcile enough to make all of this possible. I turn to Charles. He seems to struggle with this whole ordeal just as much as I am.

“He’s being held one hundred floors beneath the most heavily guarded building on the planet,” Charles says.

Logan swiftly raises and lowers his eyebrows. “Then I guess we better get to work.”

_January 25 th, 1973_

_Westchester County, New York; Washington, D.C._

If we’re going to break Erik Lehnsherr out of the Pentagon prison, we need to see what we’re dealing with. And that would involve stealing blueprints of the building from the Library of Congress.

Hank and I go alone. There’s nothing for Logan or Charles to do. Not while Charles lacks his power to control people’s minds. We drive to D.C. in the car Logan showed up in, because Charles’s two cars have been neglected for years and no longer run, and arrive at Capitol Hill around noon. Hank parks across the street and we sit on the hood of the black Buick Riviera to finalize our plan that we started to devise on the four-hour drive over.

“So, we’ve got to find a way in that won’t draw attention to ourselves, especially when we suddenly go missing,” Hank says. “Can you teleport us inside from out here?”

“Yeah, if you want to end up fused with a stack of books or a wall. I don’t know what the inside of the Library looks like. I could end up killing us if I teleport blindly.” I watch groups of people, children and adults alike, enter and exit the Library. “They give tours. Why can’t we just be another tourist?”

“We’re trying not to draw attention to ourselves,” Hank says. “If we enter a guided tour, they’ll notice when we just disappear.”

“Then let’s just walk in!”

Hank bites his lip as he thinks. “Fine. We’ll wait for the next group, blend in the back of the crowd, and find a hidden corner to teleport away from. The restricted section is on the topmost floor in the east corner, and the only accesses are from a series of locked halls through the back of the building. That’s where the blueprints will be.”

“If you’d just tell me what we’re looking for, I can go in alone, scope out the place, and teleport to the restricted section from the girl’s bathroom or something.”

“I don’t even know what we’re looking for,” Hank says. “I’ve been up to the restricted section a few times on CIA business, but I wasn’t exactly looking up Pentagon blueprints.”

“Let’s go then. We’ll just wing it.”

“And end up sharing a cell with Erik? No, thanks. We do this carefully.”

We get off the hood of the car and wait at the curb of the sidewalk. As we cross the street and walk up the stairs to the humongous white pillared building, I realize this is my first time out of the mansion in nearly seven years.

Hank and I hang back, waiting for the next tour to gather and reach the grand double doors. We casually follow the group through the entrance, into a blast of air conditioning and the most beautiful sight I’ve ever seen. I walk to the edge of the white balcony and stare out at the marbled walls thick with shelves of books, the dark wood tables layered in a circle in the very center of the ground floor. Murals adorn the domed ceiling in art like I’ve never seen before.

“Wow,” I breathe as I stare around with an open mouth.

“I know.” Hank smiles down at me. “The sight never gets old.” He looks to his right, then touches my elbow gently. “Come on. Our tour is leaving.” We follow the group down to the lower level. We spend about ten minutes exploring the Library, putting on the air of tourists while we talk out of the corner of our mouths about our plan.

“Okay, there’s the restricted section,” Hank says as he pulls out a large volume in one of the alcoves. “Up there, to the left. Wait a minute before looking.”

“All right,” I say, nodding to the book in Hank’s hand before turning around and pointing to a shelf way above my reach, as if I was interested in a book from that level. Then, while Hank plays along and reaches up with one long arm to easily take a book down, I swivel around nonchalantly and glance up at the highest balcony around the rim of the building. It looks like each section is broken up into the spaces of the octagon walls. I’ll need to teleport us into each individual one until we find what we need.

“I can get us up there,” I whisper. “We just need to find a place to disappear from without drawing attention.”

Hank walks around the shelves, pretending to examine the spines as his eyes dart around the inside of the hall. There’s no one around us save for an elderly couple in the next row over.

“Come here,” he says quietly, and leads me to the very back of the alcove. “This is as alone as we’re going to get.”

“Okay, then,” I say. “Hold out your arm.” He does so, and I get a grip on his jean jacket. “Keep an eye out.” I close my eyes and even my breathing. We practiced teleporting together back at the mansion, but it was only a short distance and I was really rusty because I hadn’t used that power in just about a decade. Now the distance will be maybe four times as long, and we have to do it without being seen.

When my breaths come in long, even streams, I will my body to move. There’s that familiar sensation of being stuffed inside a small rubber tube and half a second later, Hank and I are in the back of the balcony that I visualized, across the Library, shielded from view from the onlookers below.

“I’ll never get used to that feeling,” Hank says as he grips his head. He glances at the shelves, squinting behind his glasses as he reads the spines, and shakes his head. “We’re in the wrong section. This is all historical records.”

“Grab on,” I say, holding out my arm, and we disappear and poof into the adjacent section. This one is all geographical things. I sigh and teleport us to the next section.

I immediately notice a difference. The shelves are deeper and more spaced out, along the back wall there’s cabinets. Hank grins.

“Third time’s the charm,” he says before going to poke around.

I go to the back wall and slowly pull out a drawer labeled with a letter and number code. Inside are papers rolled together and covered in clear plastic slips. I pick one up and remove the plastic, then carefully unroll the scroll on top of the cabinet. It’s an unlabeled sketch of a building I don’t recognize.

“I think I hit the jackpot over here,” I tell Hank in a loud whisper as I replace the paper in the plastic and return it to its place.

He comes to join me and pulls open random drawers. “We need to figure out the system in which these are labeled. Then we can easily find the ones for the Pent–”

“Or we can just get lucky,” I say, and hold up the next scroll I opened. Right in the center is a pentagon diagram.

“Excellent,” Hank says with a grin. “Let’s see if there are any more.”

We dig around and open up all the rolled-up papers in the drawer and come up with four scrolls that we would need. After we replace everything else, we stare down at the four tubes of paper in plastic.

“We’re stealing these,” I say. “Does that mean we have to return them?”

“We’ll cross that bridge when the time comes,” Hank says. He takes two scrolls for himself and hands the other two to me.

“How are we getting out of here? We can’t just walk out with them. And we can’t just suddenly appear next to the car. What are we going to do?”

“Um…” Hank takes a step forward and peeks down to the ground level. “What about getting us _inside_ the car?”

“That’s pushing it.”

Hank makes a face and holds up the two scrolls in his hand.

“Yeah, you’re right,” I say. “Hold on then. This could get nasty.” Hank and I lock arms and disappear in a poof. We manage to make it inside the car, but I misjudged the distance and end up tangled with Hank in the passenger’s seat. His face is pressed against the window and my leg is tucked behind his back.

“Ugh, get off,” I grumble. I try to wiggle myself away from Hank and manage not to touch his skin at the same time. I lose my shoe and there’s the sound of crunching paper as we clamber over each other.

“Careful with the blueprints!” Hank hisses. He carefully dislodges the four scrolls and sets them in the back, then edges his way across the bench seat and starts up the engine.

“Can we get lunch or something before we drive home?” I ask as I put my seatbelt on. “I’m starving.”

Hank drives slowly up the deserted gravel drive as dusk sets. I’m excited to be home because on the drive back I realized something: I was getting separation anxiety from Charles.

Living in the same house as Charles and ignoring him is a lot different than being separated from him by miles and miles of land. It reminded me of how helpless I was that day, stuck in my dorm in Massachusetts, when Hank called to tell me that Charles wasn’t breathing. And now I’m anxious to get back to him. Maybe even apologize for the past few years. I thought Logan coming and disrupting our pathetic lives would be the end of us all, but it turns out he might have just saved us. Me and Charles, at least. Getting a small glimpse of a future where for some reason I don’t know Charles like I do now put an astounding amount of fear inside me.

Hank turns off the car and opens his door, but he stops with one foot outside when he sees that I haven’t moved a muscle.

“Are you all right?” he asks.

“Have you stopped to consider how completely insane this entire situation is?” I ask as I stare out of the windshield. “I mean, this guy that I used to know ten years ago suddenly shows up on our doorstep saying he’s from the future? And if we don’t stop Raven killing Trask the whole mutant race and half of the humans will die? I mean, it’s so illogical.”

“I don’t think he’s the same guy you knew, though.”

“Does that matter? He’s the same guy even if his memories are different.” I fold my arms across my chest. “Time traveling mutants? Killer tracking robots? A world where for some reason I’m not with Charles? It’s ridiculous.”

“But you saw into Logan’s mind, right?” Hank asks. “You know he’s not lying.”

“That doesn’t make it any less bizarre.”

“Whether Logan’s right or wrong, at least it gives us something to do,” Hank says. “Better than moping around the mansion all day drunk.”

“Hey, that can get fun,” I say. Then I shrug. “You’re right, though. Maybe it will help us get a little nudge out of the door. Maybe we can start up the school again.”

“Maybe,” Hank says wistfully. Although we both know it’s highly unlikely.

We go inside the mansion and find Logan and Charles in the study off the foyer. Charles is sprawled out on the sofa and Logan sits uncomfortably in one of the chairs in front of the desk. Right where we left them over eight hours ago.

“Did you guys move at all?” I ask.

“Only to get a drink,” Logan says, nodding to the glass on the edge of the desk.

“We got what we need.” Hank holds up the scrolls.

The four of us crowd around the circular table in the foyer with the blueprints spread out before us. Each blueprint becomes increasingly detailed. Hank points to the center of the simplest drawing, where a miniature pentagon shape is sketched inside the main building.

“This is where they’re keeping Erik,” he says, and then slides his finger to the next blueprint, which is a magnified drawing of a prison. “The room they're holding him in was built during the second World War, when there was a shortage of steel. So the foundation is pure concrete and sand. No metal.”

“Why is he in there?” Logan asks, making Charles and I exchange derisive looks.

“What, he forgot to mention?” I ask mockingly.

Logan shrugs and turns to Hank for clarification.

“Uh, JFK,” Hank says.

“What? He killed…” Logan’s voice trails off.

“What else explains a bullet miraculously curving through the air?” I say.

“Erik's always had a way with guns,” Charles mumbles.

Logan interrupts the tense muteness by asking quietly, “Are you sure you want to go through with this? This is your plan, not mine.”

“We don’t have any resources to get us in,” Hank tells Charles.

“Or out,” I add. “It’s just me, you and Hank here. Honestly, Hank’s Beast form won’t do us any good. There’s not much you can do if you can’t control anyone. And I can only teleport us around so far. Not only will it weaken me, carrying so many of you, but there’s always that chance that I can get us in and not be able to get us out. We can stare at the blueprints all we want, but that doesn’t account for the position of guards and tourists.”

“You can shapeshift into a guard,” Hank suggests.

“And how will I break that thick layer of glass over the room?” I ask, pointing to the top of the sketch of the prison. “I’m sure there’s ‘No Metal Allowed’ signs all over the place. I can’t exactly walk right by a load of guards with a sledgehammer.”

“Teleport inside the room,” Charles suggests. “Shapeshift into a guard, bypass the guards, and then teleport yourself in and out of the room with Erik.”

“She can’t go in alone,” Hank says. “Look at where the entrance to the room is. I have a device that can interfere with the signals in the security cameras and such, but even if that succeeds she’ll need backup.”

“Teleporting where I can’t see is dangerous,” I say. “And we’ve got to stay inconspicuous. I can’t just be popping up and disappearing all over the Pentagon with an escaped convict. Nor do I think I can travel all the way outside in one go. The Pentagon is miles across.”

Logan tucks his fist under his chin. “I know a guy,” he says after a moment. “Yeah, he’d be a young man now. Grew up outside of D.C. He could get into anywhere. I just don’t know how the hell we’re going to find him.”

Hank glances at Charles. “Is Cerebro out of the question?” he asks in a low voice. Charles hangs his head. His powers are gone, and I’ve never tried to use Cerebro before. My mind isn’t as strong as Charles’s used to be. It could kill me. Hank turns back to Logan. “We have a phonebook.”

“All right, I guess,” Logan says gruffly.

While Hank goes to retrieve said phonebook, Logan returns to the study and refills his glass of bourbon. I have a flashback to Sonny’s Bar, where he was drinking the same thing. Funny, his memories may change but his taste in liquor remains.

Hank comes back and replaces the blueprints with a heavy volume. Logan immediately turns halfway through it and flips the pages slowly while he sips his drink.

“Here we go,” he says, stopping his finger a third of the way down the page and tapping it. “Karen Maximoff. Seven-Five-One-Three East Kilmer Street.” Logan looks up at us. “Hyattsville, Maryland.”

“We’ve got two days until the Peace Accords,” Hank says. “It takes a little over seven hours to fly to Paris, and we’ll lose time just by going there because they’re six hours ahead. We can’t keep going to the D.C. area and driving back here if we want to stop Raven in time.”

Charles nods slowly. “Then we’ll take the jet.”


	12. Mutant Heist

_January 26 th, 1973_

_Teterboro, New Jersey; Hyattsville, Maryland; Washington, D.C._

We drive to Teterboro Airport, a private hangar where Charles stores his jet, in New Jersey around eight in the morning. Logan leaves the keys to the Buick in the car when we head around to the tarmac, because he apparently stole it from thugs that shot at him when he woke up in a motel room two days ago. That explains the U LUCKY license plate and the pink rabbit foot on the keychain. He just apparently forgot to mention that little detail as Hank and I drove a stolen vehicle to Washington D.C. and back yesterday.

I’ve never seen Charles’s jet before because I never had reason to, and I was really missing out. It’s a beautiful white Gulfstream with a pointed nose, five portal windows and a yellow and black streak along each side, and the Xavier crest on the back wing.

Hank releases the air stairs and we all pile into the jet. The cabin is very Charles, very luxurious. Dark, polished wood furniture. Leather armchairs and couches. A mini bar. And it wouldn’t be Charles’s property without books.

Logan goes straight to the back and sits in an armchair that faces the entire cabin. He must not like to have his back unattended. Charles sits diagonal from him across the way. I go with Hank to the cockpit because I’m so incredibly fascinated by it.

I watch Hank at work. Starting the jet. Flipping switches. Adjusting gauges and monitors. I haven’t the faintest idea what he’s doing – flying the stealth jet back home wasn’t part of the repertoire of helping him build it. The engines are so quiet that by the time they’re warmed up and we’re ready to drive down the runway, I can hardly tell they’re on.

The flight will only take an hour as opposed to the four-hour drive Hank and I took. Good thing, too. After take-off, I get pretty bored. I’ll have to find something to do to occupy my time on the seven-hour flight to Paris.

We fly to a hangar just along the border of Washington, D.C. It will be a little longer of a drive to Hyattsville but it will provide an easier getaway after we’ve rescued Erik.

If we’ve rescued Erik.

Hank rents us a car that Charles insists on driving. It’s been years since he was able to drive, and as we make the bumpy journey into Maryland, it’s really evident that he’s unpracticed. But the fact that he even wants to drive is half of a miracle. He looks almost normal again, in a pair of gold-brown aviators to hide the bags under his eyes, blue jeans with a large belt-buckle, and a reddish-brown leather jacket. He didn’t bother to change his dirty white T-shirt, though. Just put on a revolting red and gold print button up over it.

As we leave the city, the scenery slowly becomes more suburban. Crowded businesses develop into mom-and-pop stores, occasional trees and clumps of grass along the sidewalk become full-fledged lawns in front of quaint little houses.

Charles turns onto Kilmer Street and almost immediately Logan throws his hand across the front seat and says, “Here, here, here. Stop!”

“Where?”

“Just stop here!”

“All right, all right.” Charles slams on the brakes and Hank and I shoot forward against the back of the front seat. I rub my shoulder, where the seatbelt dug into my collar bone as it failed to keep me locked in place.

“Next time, I’m driving,” Logan growls snippily as we get out of the car. “Don’t get used to it.”

We walk up the front path in a single file line, following Logan. I pick at my jeans and adjust my pink sweater under my black leather jacket that got all twisted when Charles tried to send Hank and I through the windshield. We arrive at the door. Logan knocks.

A tall, slender woman with half of her long, brown hair hastily pinned up opens the door. Waves of disheveled stress and annoyance reach my senses; she must be Karen Maximoff.

“What’s he done now?” the woman asks with a sigh. She doesn’t look the least bit surprised. “I’ll just write you a check for whatever he took.”

I make a face at Hank. Who the hell are we dealing with?

“We just need to talk to him,” Logan says as he removes his sunglasses and tucks them in the collar of his shirt.

Karen stands back, opening the door wider, and calls deep into the tiny house, “Peter! The cops are here!” She glances at us one by one as we enter her home. “Again,” she adds softly.

Logan opens the door to what must be the basement. The sound of the television and swift clicking, coming in sets of two, wafts up to us. Logan leads the way down the wooden steps into an incredibly crowded room. It’s dim – the single light bulb and the two tiny windows don’t offer much light – and packed with junk. A television on an upturned crate, an old sofa, a chipped coffee table, an arcade game, piles and piles and piles of Ho-Ho’s and Ding Dongs and an assortment of other junk food. Street signs and neon lights garnish the walls. And in the far corner of the room, a silver blur flashes periodically at either end of a ping pong table, accompanying the clicking I heard above.

As I look closer, the form of a teenage boy materializes for a fraction of a second at one end, hits a ping pong ball across the table with a paddle, disappears and then reappears at the other end just to hit the ball again. In one of the precious quick moments he seems to stop, he says at breakneck speed, “What do you guys want? I didn’t do anything.” While our attention is still on the ping pong table, the boy’s voice suddenly comes from the couch. “I’ve been here all day.”

The four of us turn around and find the boy lounging on the couch, his arms behind his head and his feet crossed. Now that he’s stationary I finally get a good look at him, and what I see isn’t at all what I expected.

Yes, he’s young. Maybe seventeen or eighteen years old. He’s got spectacular silver-gray hair that hangs past his ears. He wears a black Pink Floyd shirt, a black windbreaker, jeans, dirty white sneakers, and an amused smirk on his pale face.

“Relax, Peter,” Logan says easily. “We’re not cops.”

“Of course, you’re not,” Peter says with a casual shrug. “If you were, you wouldn’t be driving a rental car.”

“How do you know we’ve got a rental car?” Charles asks with a frown.

Still speaking at the speed of light, Peter says, “I checked your registration when you were walking to the door. I also had some time to kill so I went through your rental agreement. Saw you were from out of town. Are you FBI?” In a flash that whips my hair around my face, Peter abruptly appears behind Charles and flips through his battered leather wallet. “No, you're not cops. Hey, what's with this ‘gifted youngsters’ place?”

“That’s an old card–” Charles pats his back pockets and turns around to find his wallet and a business card for the school falling to the floor. Peter is no longer behind him, but suddenly at the giant arcade game, playing Breakout so swiftly that the white bars on the edges of the screen become one solid line, and the ball bouncing between them is virtually invisible.

I smile. This guy is incredible. I could have really used him as a partner when I was living on the streets. Hank seems to agree, because he says, “He’s fascinating.”

“He’s a pain in the arse,” Charles grumbles as he picks up his wallet, shoves the card back inside, and returns it to his back pocket.

“Is he a type of teleporter?” I ask Logan, staring at Peter’s back in amusement.

“No, he’s just fast,” Logan says. Then, he sighs. “When I knew him he wasn’t so…young.”

“Young? You’re just old,” Peter says. I see his smirk in the reflection of the screen.

“So you’re not afraid to show your powers?” Hank asks Peter, almost admirably.

“Powers? What powers? What are you talking about? Do you see something strange here? Nothing anybody would believe if you told them.” Humorously, Peter vanishes from the arcade game and resumes his relaxed pose on the couch, licking a half-eaten popsicle he must have finished in the last millisecond. “So, who are you? What do you want?”

“We need your help, Peter,” Logan says.

“For what?”

“To break in to a highly-secured facility. And to get someone out.”

Peter grins. “Prison break? That’s illegal, you know.”

“Only if you get caught,” I say, matching Peter’s grin, and he observes me favorably.

“So, what’s in it for me?” Peter asks.

Charles takes off his sunglasses and rubs his tired eyes. “You, you kleptomaniac, get to break into the Pentagon.”

This seems to interest Peter because he sits up. “How do I know I can trust you?”

“Because we’re just like you,” Logan says.

“Show him,” I say. There’s the slightest hint of giddiness in my voice, no doubt from the anticipation of someone’s reaction when they see what Logan is about to do. As much as I hate him, that part was always incredibly cool.

Peter stares with a slightly open mouth as Logan raises one fist over his chest and slowly extends three long bone claws from within his arm. Peter raises an eyebrow.

“That’s cool, but it’s disgusting,” he says. Not the reaction I anticipated.

“So, you’ll help us?” Charles asks.

In less than a second, Peter is back at his ping pong table, paddle in hand. “Sure, why not.”

In the time it takes Logan, Charles, Hank and I to walk back up the basement steps, Peter’s hit the ping pong ball at himself about ten times – that I counted. When we’re at the front door, Peter’s suddenly in the kitchen, telling his mom he’s going out with some friends and he’ll be back later. She seems so beyond worried about Peter and his antics that she just wearily says, “All right.”

Logan drives us to the Pentagon. Peter sits between Hank and I in the back seat, talking his head off. He may move and think at superhuman speed, but the rest of us don’t hear at superhuman speed. I’m only half listening, anyway. My stomach clenches in nervous anticipation as it finally dawns on me the seriousness of what we’re about to accomplish.

Why is it whenever I’m involved in a mutant get-together, it engages national and international security issues?

In the visitor parking lot of the Pentagon, we gather outside of the car. While Peter munches on a box of Cracker Jacks, Hank straps a black fanny pack around his waist and takes a navy blue hat out and plants it on his head. It matches his blue windbreaker and blue and white striped shirt, but it makes him look like a child.

I do a quick wolf-whistle, drawing a small laugh from both Logan and Charles, to my astonishment. “Stylish, Hank.”

He makes a face and shrugs. “If I’m a tourist I’ve got to look the part. You guys are lucky you don’t have to be.”

Logan donned his leather jacket again, and his jeans are darker today. Charles replaced his leather jacket and printed button up for a black suit jacket over a white button up shirt and black tie. Even though his hair is long and stringy and his beard covers most of his face, he looks really good. Good to the point where I feel stirrings of attraction that I haven’t felt in ages.

I reluctantly put on a gray knee-length skirt and navy blouse. We’re trying to appear as if we’re from an interdepartmental division. Peter’s exchanged his black windbreaker for a silver leather jacket. He also now wears clear black-rimmed goggles pushed up on his forehead and sturdy black boots. Once we’re by the doors, he’ll be inside and setting the plan in action before we’ve even passed the entrance.

At the front window, we purchase tickets for a Pentagon tour and join the throng of people gathering in front of a female tour guide. Peter offers me some Cracker Jacks, which I politely decline. He shrugs, throws the box in the trash, and just as we enter the building, he disappears.

I half listen to the facts the tour guide lists as we walk through the hallways. I eye the guards, the Pentagon employees, looking for the staircase Charles, Logan and I will use to escape the crowd.

“…built in nineteen forty-three, the Pentagon is the world's largest office building, housing more than twenty-five thousand military employees, stretched out over six million square feet…”

In front of us, a little boy tugs on his father’s shirt sleeve and says, “Where’s the bathroom?”

A little girl, presumably his sister, pokes her head around her mother and says, “He always needs to pee!”

Hank giggles and I laugh, but then fall silent as a haunting thought hits me: Jean would be about their age by now. I hang my head. To my surprise, Charles takes my hand. I look up and see the same sadness in his eyes that I feel in my heart.

We turn a corner and come across the stairwell in question. Hank nods to it as he digs in his fanny pack for a small silver device with three black knobs. Logan, Charles and I slip off under the cover Hank will provide with that device: interfering with the security footage signal. Once on the lower level, we rip off our visitors badges and chuck them in a trash can.

“Can you locate him?” Charles asks me as we walk.

I place my fingers to my temple and focus. It turns out it’s not that hard to find Peter because his mind is moving about a hundred times faster than a normal person’s. I find him almost instantly.

“I see him. He’s – crap, who gave him duct tape?”

“What?” Logan asks.

“He’s duct-taping a guard to the inside of the security elevator.” I roll my eyes. “I thought he was just going to knock the guard out?”

“He likes to be flashy,” Logan grumbles.

“He’s in,” I inform them, just as an alarm blares from somewhere deep within the Pentagon. “He’s with Erik.” I notice Charles’s jaw clench at the mention of his name.

Across the hall, we descend another flight of stairs and come across the Pentagon kitchens. We hang around outside while I listen to Peter and Erik’s conversation, which is quite amusing. Peter seems to be annoying the hell out of Erik.

“Peter got Erik out,” I say. “They’re making their way back.”

In Peter’s mind, I feel him place his hand on the back of Erik’s neck.

_What are you doing?_ Erik asks, irritated.

_I’m holding your neck so you don’t get whiplash._

_What?_

Peter rolls his eyes. _Whip-laaaash_.

I fight back a laugh.

The elevator doors at the end of the long hall swing open and twenty or so guards materialize, guns raised. In a matter of mere seconds, Peter and Erik fly across the hall, sending the guards on either side of them flying back. They reach the elevator just as the doors close. I shake my head to clear the insane buzz I got from sharing Peter’s mind while he traveled that fast. It’s incredible.

Erik sways on his feet, catching his breath, fighting apparent nausea resembling sea sickness. Peter changes from a guard’s uniform back into his normal clothes in two seconds flat. Erik has to do a double take to make sure he saw him correctly.

_It'll pass, it happens to everyone,_ Peter tells Erik. _You must've done something serious. What’d you do, huh? What’d you do? What’d you do? Why did they have you in there?_

Erik groans in annoyance and says, _For killing the President._

_Oh!_ Peter turns around to the guard he duct-taped to the corner of the elevator and mouths, _Shit!_

For some reason, though, Erik continues to talk in a calmer tone. _If there's one thing I'm guilty of, though, it's fighting for people like us._

Peter doesn’t catch his meaning. Instead, he pesters Erik with questions of, _You take karate? You know karate, man?_

Erik responds with, _I don’t know karate, but I do know crazy_.

Their elevator has about fifteen more floors to go. “It’s time,” I tell Logan and Charles, and I locate Hank’s mind to tell him we’re ready to go. A few seconds later a fire alarm goes off. Soaking wet cooks flood out of the kitchen. We push past them, getting drenched in the process from the sprinklers spraying the room with water from above.

Charles addresses the remaining personnel and guards in the kitchen as they rush past us. “Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, this is a Code Red situation. We are evacuating the entire floor so that my associates and I can, uh, secure the prison.”

We’re approached by two remaining guards. “Who are you?” one of them asks.

“We're special operations, CB...FB-CID,” Charles says uncertainly, glancing at Logan and I. “Perhaps you didn't hear me when I first spoke, but it is imperative that you understand we're in a complete lockdown situation. We have to get you to the third floor–”

With a frustrated groan and a hasty eye roll, Logan steps forward, plants a nice right hook to one guard’s jaw, grabs a frying pan from a shelf as he spins with the momentum and whacks it against the back of the other guard’s knee, tripping him up, then against the same guard’s head in one swift motion. He strikes the first guard in the head again, and then throws him over a metal shelf by the scruff of his collar.

The guards lay unconscious on the floor. Now, we are alone in the kitchen with a clear path to the security elevator. Logan tosses the frying pan aside and faces a white-faced Charles, who stares down at the guards in abhorrence.

“Oh, I’m sorry. Were you finished?” Logan grumbles.

While Charles regains his composure, I bend down and remove a long metal key from one of the guard’s belts. “Next time, I’ll do the talking, Charles.” I sense the elevator getting closer, hear Peter and Erik’s continued conversation as I slide the key into the hole in the wall and unlock the outside doors.

_They told me you control metal_ , Peter says. _You know, my mom once knew a guy who could do that_ _…_ Their elevator comes to a halt at the floor.

My ears pick up Charles telling Logan, “I’m just not very good with violence–” as the elevator dings and the doors slide open.

Charles faces the elevator, gets one look at Erik in his gray prisoner’s outfit, scroungy hair and ragged beard, but instead of a welcoming hello, Charles lets out a furious yell and lunges at Erik. He punches him in the face so hard that as Erik falls to the ground, Charles trips forward and slams into the back of the elevator.

I have a feeling Charles thought about doing that more than once over the last ten years, as have I, though I got much more creative. Logan, with a tickled grin on his face, seems amused.

Peter stands back, next to the guard taped against the wall, watching in delight as Charles steadies himself and faces Erik, massaging the pain from his fist.

“Good to see you too, old friend,” Erik says caustically from the floor as he rubs his jaw. “And walking.”

“No thanks to you,” Charles spits.

Erik gets to his feet, slowly, so as not to set Charles on another hitting rampage. “You’re the last person in the world I expected to see today.”

“Believe me, I wouldn't be here if I didn't have to,” Charles says icily. “If we get you out of here, we do it my way. No killing.”

Erik smirks and points to his head. “No helmet. I couldn’t disobey you even if I wanted.”

Charles narrows his eyes and says, almost in a hiss, “I’m never getting inside that head again.”

Before Charles starts throwing punches again, I step up and point threateningly at Erik’s chest. “We need your word.”

“Leah,” he says, the astonishment unmistakable on his face. “That’s two people I never thought I’d see again. You stuck with Charles all these years?”

“Yes, because I don’t betray my friends!” I scream, and then this time I attempt to spring forward and claw at Erik’s face but Logan grabs the back of my jacket as Charles throws out his arm to stop me.

“Easy, kid,” Logan says.

“You’ve still got that fire, I see,” Erik tells me delightfully.

“Uh, guys, I hate to break up the reunion, but we’ve got company,” Peter says, nodding to the kitchen behind us.

We find ourselves cornered by five guards, all with their white guns pointing at us. I try to yank the guns out of their hands with my mind – and feel the magnetic wave from Erik as he tries to do the same – but the guards are prepared. The guns are plastic.

“Nobody move!” one guard shouts.

“Hold it right there!” another yells.

I notice they seem oddly confident in themselves now that they’ve got plastic guns in the presence of a mutant that controls metal.

“Charles,” Erik says, sounding almost frightened, as if he doesn’t want his five minutes of freedom to end with a bullet hole to his chest. It would serve him right, though. “Freeze them, Charles!”

“I can’t!” Charles cries.

“Hands up!” a guard orders us.

The next few seconds are a jumbled mess. The carts and shelves shake violently as Erik angrily raises all of the metal in the room; Charles turns to him shouting, “No!” The guards’ guns go off, and then barely half a second later, the bullets whizz past my ear, all of them missing their targets. The guns fall to the wet floor with a clatter, two guards punch each other in the face, another guard is suddenly face-first on the ground. The fourth guard took himself out with a fist to his own jaw, and the guard closest to us lands on his back as a plate skids off his face, rolling to a stop against the wall.

Peter is no longer with us. He is across the room, wearing one of the guard’s Pentagon caps, with his arms folded over his chest and a proud smile on his face.

Logan, Charles, Erik and I carefully make our way across the kitchen, stepping over and around unconscious guards, cutlery, and food.

“Thanks, kid,” Logan tells Peter as he pats him on the back, and we make our way out of the kitchen.

“I can’t get over how fast you are,” I tell Peter as we walk through the lower levels of the Pentagon. I’ve gone over several scenarios in my head trying to comprehend what Peter did and how fast he must have done it and it makes my brain hurt.

“Yeah,” Peter says with a shrug. “It can get kind of annoying, though, if I’m not moving quickly. You know, because everyone else is in slow motion.”

“We’re not in slow motion,” I say. “We’re normal.”

He shrugs, and as his silver jacket moves with his shoulders I remember the silver blur in his basement as he moved back and forth around the ping pong table.

“Silver,” I say under my breath. “Quicksilver.”

“Huh?” Peter says.

“It’s nothing,” I say. “Just, the last time I was part of a mission like this, we all had codenames. Well, I didn’t. I didn’t want one. But the others did. Havok. Banshee. Beast. Mystique…” My voice trails off. Erik’s head turns a fraction of an inch to the side, as if the naming of my friends caught his attention.

“Huh, that’s cool,” Peter says. “And you want to name me Quicksilver?”

“Do you like it?” I ask.

Peter smiles. “Yeah, I do.”

While we walk, I finally understand why I like Peter. He reminds me of Sean. That’s when I grasp how long it’s been since I’ve heard from him or Alex. With the stirrings of our little mutant family giving rise to opportunities, I’m going to make it top priority to locate my boys once we’re done with Raven.

One level up, Charles stops our expedition and points out of a window. “There’s the parking lot. Leah, take Erik there now. We can’t be walking through the front door with a prisoner. We’ll go find Hank and meet you there in a few minutes.”

“Okay.” I turn to Erik. “I hope this makes you uncomfortable.” Before Erik can comprehend what I said, I grab hold of his sleeve and teleport us to the parking lot, out of sight behind a dumpster. Erik sways on his feet and grips his head.

“I’ve had enough of this unnatural transportation,” he groans.

“You know, ‘Thank you for breaking me out of the most highly secured prison cell in the world’ might be a little bit nicer.”

“Well, we were never one for accepting favors from the other, were we?”

I grit my teeth and shove Erik around. “Let’s get to the car. I don’t want you running off now that you’re free.”

When we reach our blue rental car, I realize that Logan has the keys. I wave my hand in front of the door handle and the lock pops up.

“Ah, I had almost forgotten,” Erik says. “You control metal, too.”

“Yeah, so don’t try anything fancy,” I tell him as we get in the car and I lock our doors with my power.

“Have you gained any more interesting abilities since we last saw each other?”

“Why? Are you planning to rebuild your legion of backstabbing mutants?”

Erik chuckles. “There’s no need to be so cold with me. I’ve had a lot of time to think over the past nine years…”

“What, were you regretting all the bullet work you’d done? Were you feeling sorry that you didn’t get away with killing the president like you so easily evaded blame for paralyzing Charles?”

Erik’s face twists with rage as he reaches across the seat and pushes me back against the window. My head painfully collides with the glass, but I don’t break eye contact with him. I stare him down as he puts his face close to mine and says in a callous whisper, “You don’t know the half of it,” before releasing me with a shove.

I rub the back of my head. “I see solitary confinement hasn’t changed you.”

“And freedom hasn’t changed you.”

“It wasn’t much of a freedom,” I say quietly.

Erik doesn’t get a chance to respond because Hank, Logan, Charles and Peter appear, weaving their way through the cars toward us. I get out of the car and move to the back seat, where Hank and Peter join me. I don’t want to be in the same vehicle with Erik, let alone the same seat.

The drive to the airport is made in an uncomfortable silence that not even Peter’s hyper-speed chatter can alleviate. After the eighth try to start up a conversation, Peter sits back against the seat, looking dejected. When I press into his mind I find him very irritated at the slow progression of the car – in which Logan is driving at eighty-five miles per hour.

Logan pulls the car right alongside the Gulfstream jet. He leaves the keys in the ignition because we will no longer need it. Hank lowers the air steps again and he, Logan and Erik disappear inside the cabin. Charles and I stay outside to have a last word with Peter, who leans back casually against the rental car.

“Peter, thank you very, very much,” Charles tells him as he shakes his hand.

“It was nothing,” Peter says. “Hey – I saw your flight plan in the cockpit. Why are you going to Paris?”

Charles and I exchange slightly rapt glances. With the slightest of motions, Charles shakes his head. Yeah, we’d better not draw any more attention to ourselves.

“You take care, all right?” I tell Peter. “And keep in touch.”

Charles nods to the car. “Do me a favor and return it for me?”

Peter grins wide and takes off around to the driver’s side. As he opens the door, Charles calls, “And Quicksilver? Take it slow!” But Peter’s already inside and tearing off along the tarmac.

“I like him,” I tell Charles.

“He’s a good kid.”

“Are you ready for this?” My words have so many underlying meanings. We’re dredging up painful memories from our past that we laid to rest ages ago.

“As ready as I’ll ever be.” He reaches over and touches my cheek. The touch shocks me, but not because of my power. I’m taken aback by his sudden gesture, like when he took my hand earlier in the Pentagon. “I’m glad you’re with me.”

My throat tightens as I choke up. “All these years, Charles. I’m so s–”

“Charles! Leah! We’ve got to go!” Hank yells from the cockpit.

“You don’t have to apologize,” Charles says quickly before kissing me on the cheek and leading me inside the jet by my hand.

Logan resumed his seat at the back of the cabin. Erik is on his way there, reaching for the newspaper on the polished table in front of Logan. Logan swiftly pins the paper down with a single claw.

Erik scoffs and walks away. “Imagine if they were metal,” he says snarkily as he sits down on the long leather couch. The air steps retract behind Charles and I, drawing Erik’s attention. He narrows his eyes at the sight of our locked hands. We sit near the very front, on opposite sides of a table, and I make sure my back is to Erik.

I hear Erik ask Logan, “Where did they dig you up?” I listen a little bit harder. Logan is about to give his same time travel spiel and I’m curious to see how Erik will handle it. As it is, Erik doesn’t seem to remember Logan from that day in the bar in Brooklyn.

“Might be hard to believe, but, uh, you sent me,” Logan tells Erik. “You and Charles. From the future.”

Erik doesn’t respond, so I can only assume he’s looking at Logan peculiarly or he’s written off his words as complete nonsense and decided to ignore him. I cast my senses and discover, humorously, the latter to be true.

We’re in the air now, flying steady. It seems as if with each minute that passes, each mile that we fly closer to Paris, the knots in my stomach twist tighter, increasing my nausea and angst. I stare blankly at Charles; he stares blankly out of the window.

Charles and I finally have this opportunity to truly have a conversation. Something we haven’t had in…well, years. Since right after Jean was born. But there are no words. What can we say besides what already been said? Apologies, mostly, yes. Other than that it would be about our past. So…forcing Charles out of a self-induced coma, depression, drinking, having a child, giving the child up, the new serum and its effects. Yeah, that’s not a trip down memory lane I want to travel right now.

I decide to leave Charles with his thoughts and visit Hank. No matter the situation, Hank and I have always had an amiable relationship, growing closer with each passing year. After all, he delivered my child. How much closer can you get? Charles may be the most important person in my life, but Hank will always be my best friend. I’ve wallowed in self-pity and even went so far as to depend on Hank to basically carry me through life, keeping me alive both with science and friendship. It makes the guilt worse, because I have not returned the favor in the slightest.

In the tiny hall prior to the cockpit, I push aside the blue curtain to reveal Hank in the pilot’s seat. The scraping of the curtain’s rungs on the metal rod seem abnormally loud in the quiet plane.

“Hey,” Hank says when I approach. “Restless already?”

“Yes.” I take the co-pilot’s chair and make a show of checking my wristwatch. “Only six hours and fifty-six minutes left.”

Hank’s lips pull into a small grin. “Try seven hours and eight minutes.” I frown at him. In response, he taps a gauge. “Have to account for weather conditions.”

I slump back in the chair and fold my arms over my chest. “I still have a hard time believing the events of the last forty-eight hours.”

Hank nods. “Kind of like you’re dreaming, but you can’t wake up.”

“Exactly.” Hank and I both sigh heavily at the same time. “Is it real, though? I mean, Raven murdering someone?”

“I know. I can’t wrap my head around it, either.”

“I suppose it’s possible.” I lower my voice. “She hung around with Erik for a few years before he landed himself in prison. Maybe that had a bigger effect on her than we thought.”

Hank shakes his head. “If Logan is telling the truth about the future, she picked the one guy probably worth killing. Look at the type of weapons he designs. Mutant-hunting Sentinels. Being a mutant, I could see why she’d want him dead.”

“What I don’t understand is how Raven knows about the Sentinels _now_ , if Trask is building them in the future.”

“Maybe he’s already started the designs,” Hank says. “Maybe there’s something we don’t know.”

“How much do you know about Trask?” I ask. “Besides him being a scientist.”

Hank shrugs. “He seems to be an advocate for humanity.”

“Who isn’t? We all want to live.”

“That’s not what I mean. I mean, he’s an advocate for _humanity_.” Hank looks at me pointedly. “Humans.”

My face falls. “Oh.”

“Yeah. He’s apparently always had an interest in human origins. He wanted to unlock the mysteries of DNA. Recently, he delved so deeply into research on humans that he ended up digging deep enough to find the X-gene, symbolic of mutants.”

“Really? That can’t be good.”

“It’s not.”

“How do you know all this?”

Hank seems to take longer than necessary to check a few of the gauges before saying, “I still have some connections in the CIA.”

“What else have your connections told you?” I ask with narrowed eyes.

He shrugs. “Not much, really. Trask Industries has been around since nineteen sixty-seven. He started it up because all of his colleagues ridiculed him about his theories on mutants.”

“If only they’d ridiculed him enough to make him quit.”

“Nothing we can do about it now, except what Logan’s told us to do.”

I sigh again. “It’s been so long since we’ve seen her.”

Hank doesn’t take his eyes off the clear blue sky. The muscles in his jaw work as he grinds his teeth. It makes me wonder how much he cared about Raven, and how much this hurts him. Something I have never, not once since I met him, asked about.

“I’m sorry, Hank,” I say quietly.

“What for?”

I chew on my lip, trying to form words into a proper sentence. “You have always been there for me, in my best and worst moments, and I can’t say I’ve done the same.”

“You’ve been there. You just had a lot more going on.”

“It wasn’t fair to you. I essentially used you as a crutch. I dumped all my problems on you and never once did I ask how you were doing. I feel like such a crappy friend.”

Hank reaches across the tiny space between our seats and pats my knee gently. “You were a good friend, Leah. _Are_ a good friend. If I had to, I’d do it all again in a heartbeat.”

“Thank you.” I ungracefully sniff in leakage from my nose, the result of me trying not to cry. “I’ve never said that either.”

“It was implied.” Hank grins.

“How are you doing?” I ask. “Don’t hold back. Tell me everything.”

Hank rubs the back of his neck. “That’s kind of a loaded question.”

“Six hours and fifty-six minutes left,” I say after checking my watch. “Right back where we were when I first sat down.”

Hank gives a lighthearted chuckle. “Um, well…surprisingly, I think I’m all right. And that stands true for before as well. I’ve been hurt, depressed at times…but I’ve always had something to do to keep my mind occupied. The lab, the jet. That helped a lot. Therapeutic, you might say.”

“I hate to ask but…I mean, I should have asked a long time ago…how much do you care for Raven?”

His jaw takes on the clenching and teeth grind again. “She’s…I don’t know anymore. I really don’t. She isn’t like anyone I’ve ever met. I really thought we could, maybe…I don’t know, be something. Back when we met. I basically threw that away when we got in a fight the night I gave her the serum. She turned to Erik, and then there was no turning back…”

Aw, crap. Hank’s in love with her. It’s unmistakable in his voice. Love in vain. He knows he will never be with her, but he won’t be able to stop loving her either. There’s nothing I can say at this point.

“Are you hungry?” I ask suddenly. “I’m starving.”

“I could eat,” Hank says. He sounds grateful for the subject change.

I leave the cockpit after placing my hand gently on Hank’s shoulder for a brief moment. He doesn’t acknowledge the gesture.

On my way to the back of the plane, I enlist Charles to be my sous-chef in the preparation of lunch for everyone. Instead of helping me put together sandwiches, though, he just pours himself a Scotch and watches me. I get a little bit agitated because it feels like I’m back at the mansion, after Cuba, serving everyone. Then I grow sad, because that reminds me of how long it’s been since I’ve talked to Alex or Sean.

Erik and Logan make themselves drinks to go along with lunch. We all sit at separate corners of the plane, eating in silence. Hank switches the jet to autopilot so he can eat.

When the plates are clean and the glasses empty, Erik sits back on the couch with a sigh. He drapes one arm over the back of it, relishing the actual cushioned furniture since he’s had a thin mat to sleep on for the last nine years. Charles stares at him with intensity, eyes slightly narrowed. The longer he looks, the more frustrated he gets until his face has turned a pale red color. He’s trying to read Erik’s mind, despite himself.

Erik seems to sense this. “How did you lose them?” he asks Charles.

“The treatment for my spine affects my DNA,” he finally says.

I frown. That’s not how it works. Hank developed the serum to get rid of Charles’s powers, and his ability to walk was a side effect. Why doesn’t he want Erik to know he gave up his incredible gift?

Erik seems to find something wrong with Charles’s answer anyway. “You sacrificed your powers so you could walk?” he asks incredulously.

Fire burns in Charles’ eyes. “I sacrificed my powers so that I could sl–” His voice falters and he closes his mouth. The rims of his eyes are red and puffy, from fatigue and sadness, the way they’ve been since practically the day he was shot. “What do you know about it?”

“I’ve lost my fair share,” Erik says.

Charles scoffs. “Dry your eyes, Erik. It doesn’t justify what you’ve done.”

“You have no idea what I’ve done,” Erik says in almost a growling sort of voice. I catch Logan’s eye across the cabin. He arches an eyebrow. We both anticipate a fight.

“I know that you took the things that mean the most to me,” Charles spits.

“Well, maybe you should have fought harder for them,” Erik sarcastically retorts.

Charles furiously gets to his feet. “If you want a fight, Erik–”

“Sit down!” Logan commands.

He might as well not have spoken for all the good it did. Charles advances around the table at Erik, yelling, “I will give you a fight!”

Logan stands up. Erik quickly follows suit and holds his hand out to stop Logan. “Let him come,” he says quietly, just as Charles reaches up and grabs Erik’s shirt by the collar.

“You abandoned me!” he screams. “You took her away, and you abandoned me!”

I try to pull Charles back but the jet jerks violently and I’m thrown against the chair. My stomach lurches at the sound of crushing metal. I look up at Erik, who now has a murderous look on his face as his rage reverberates off of him, affecting the metal in the jet. He takes a step towards Charles, who stumbles back.

“Angel,” Erik says darkly. He looms threateningly over Charles. “Azazel. Emma. Banshee. Mutant brothers and sisters, all dead!”

“What?” I whisper.

“Countless others, experimented on, butchered!” Erik yells angrily. The jet starts a rough nose dive, taking my nerves along with it. Charles tumbles back over the table and braces himself against the bookshelf above his chair. Logan, with his face devoid of color, struggles to stay in his seat.

My brain seems to be on fire as I recall painful flashbacks of crash-landing the stealth jet on the beach in Cuba and try to comprehend what Erik just said. Sean is dead?

“Erik!” Hank screams from the cockpit. He has trouble controlling the jet as it hurtles toward the sea, the hull creaking as the metal is crushed down. I try to keep the frame of the plane in tact as Erik continues to yell.

“Where were _you_ , Charles? We were supposed to protect them! Where were you when your own people needed you?” Erik balls his hands into fists and I fight to counteract the damage he does to the plane, but he’s a lot stronger. “Hiding! You and Leah and Hank! Pretending to be something you’re not!”

“Erik!” I shout over the sound of the jet engines groaning loudly. “Erik, stop it!”

He hears me, or at least notices it’s harder for him to keep balance, so the jet levels out. His face is full of rage but his tone is sad when he tells Charles, “You abandoned us all.”

Charles straightens up, composure and all, and gets to his feet. He wears a pained expression, though, as he wordlessly turns on his heel and joins Hank in the cockpit.

The jet goes quiet and I hear how loudly Logan breathes, out of fear, out of fighting to stay seated. He grunts as he shifts to the side, pulls a lighter and cigar from his pocket.

“So, you were always an asshole,” he says as he lights up.

Erik answers mockingly, “I take it we’re best buddies in the future.”

Logan releases smoke from his mouth, saturating the air with its lovely, woodsy aroma. “I spent a lot of years trying to bring you down, bub.”

“How does that work out for you?”

With a sigh, Logan says, “You’re like me. You’re a survivor.” He takes a long draw as he observes the trashed plane. He waves his cigar at it. “Do you wanna pick all that shit up?” he growls.

Erik glances at the broken dishes and glasses on the floor, the books that have fallen out of the shelves, the silverware thrown about. Then our eyes meet, and mine fill with tears.

“Were you lying?” I ask him quietly. “Were you lying about Sean, and the others?”

“I wish I were,” Erik says solemnly.

I shake my head as the tears streak down my face. “What about Alex?”

“I can’t say for sure.”

I suddenly feel incredibly guilty for not taking more concern in why Alex and Sean hadn’t been in contact. It was safe enough to think that they were just in a place where they couldn’t write or call. For some reason, I never thought it would be possible for them to die.

“They were…experimented on?” I ask weakly. “They died after being cut apart and tested like lab rats?”

“That’s why Raven kills Trask,” Logan says gruffly. “Trask stole mutants, kept them against their will. All to further his research. All for the Sentinel program.”

Anger burns inside me. “Then why are we stopping her?” I shout. “She seems to have a pretty damn good reason for killing him!”

“Because there won’t be a future if he dies!” Logan shouts right back. “If he lives and his secrets are outed, it will be the end of Trask, Trask Industries, and anything evil he’s planning against mutants.”

I open my mouth to respond and find that I’m too exhausted to fight, to yell, to scream out all my frustrations. I clamp my mouth shut and feel like a cornered animal. There’s nowhere for me to run and hide, all the way up here in the sky. I need to escape before everyone sees me break down. I run to the only place I can have some privacy: the bathroom.

Silent crying takes a lot more energy than simply bawling. I huddle on the toilet seat, slowly rocking back and forth. I can’t believe any of this. It can’t be true. My precious, carefree Sean…dead? Gone forever? My mind floods with images of his sweet, freckled face now pale and lifeless, his eyes blank and hollow. A mangled body full of bruises and cuts and needle marks.

_No,_ I tell myself firmly. No, I don’t believe it. If Alex and Sean were together, Alex would have protected Sean. I’m sure of it. Erik must be lying. He has to be. That’s who he is. A liar, a manipulator. He’ll say anything to get Charles on his side.

Just this simple thought gives me the resolve I need to rise from the toilet seat, splash my face with water to remove the tear streaks, straighten out my clothes, flatten my hair. I plan to burst out of the bathroom and confront Erik with all the fire I have inside me.

I throw open the door with such force it bangs back against the wall. Logan jumps in his seat, which is astonishing because he strikes me as the type of man who is rarely taken by surprise. He turns his head to glare at me. I ignore him, though, because at the moment, the subject of my wrath walks down the small cabin with a chess board in hand. I watch him set it down at the table where Charles resumed his seat.

“Fancy a game?” Erik asks tentatively. Charles takes a deliberately slow sip of his drink. “It’s been a while.”

“I’m not in the mood for games, thank you,” Charles says briskly to the window.

“Looks like you’ll have to reschedule that brawl with Erik,” Logan tells me in a low voice. He brings the cigar to his lips and puffs. I scowl at him. “That is what you were going to do, wasn’t it?” I continue to scowl, which draws a light chuckle from him. “Thought so. Sit down, kid. Enjoy the ride.”

I plop down on the seat across the aisle. “Not much to enjoy when you just found out your friends have been murdered.”

Logan lowers his cigar, narrows his eyes and says, “ _My_ friends have been murdered too. By the–”

“What? By the asshole that we’re going to _save?_ ”

“I don’t see how you still can’t understand why we’re doing this,” Logan says angrily. “Everyone else is on board.”

“Is it such a bad thing that I agree with Raven?”

“I’ve told you what happens in the future if we don’t do this.”

“Yeah, well I–” I stop talking. Logan thinks it’s because I can’t bring myself to say that I don’t believe him, but it’s really because of something I heard Erik say just now. After all, I’ve still got one ear on them.

“That’s it, isn’t it? I come from the future and you still don’t trust–”

“Shut up, you egotistical ass,” I hiss at Logan. “Did Erik just say he didn’t kill the president?” I turn around.

Charles stares at Erik in disbelief. “The bullet curved, Erik,” he insists.

“Because I was trying to save him,” Erik responds in a pleading tone. “There were ten shots taken. I stopped nine of them. They took me out before I could…well, let’s just say it only takes one. You of all people should know that.”

Charles narrows his eyes, as if he doesn’t know what to think. But then, his face softens. “Why would you try and save him?”

Erik sighs. “Because he was one of us.”

With wide eyes, I turn back to Logan. I raise my eyebrows, silently asking, _Really?_ Logan huffs and takes a sip of his drink, like he wouldn’t confirm or deny it just because _I_ was the one asking. Dick.

“That’s why they killed him,” Erik continues.

“Who?”

The cabin falls silent. Three pairs of eyes turn my way before I realize I was the one who spoke. I clear my throat awkwardly.

“Who killed him?” I ask. The fact that I even asked this question tells me that I think Erik tells the truth…and I did so incredibly easily. It makes me nauseated.

“Trask.” Erik says the name as if it leaves a bad taste on his tongue. “He set me up. It was all part of his plan to turn the government against us. It’s how he got his Sentinel program started.”

I suck in a quick breath as it all falls into place like lead blocks, what Hank and I were talking about earlier. That’s how Raven knows about Trask. She’s always known. She’s probably been planning this since Erik got taken to prison.

Charles seems to find truth to Erik’s words as well. “You must think me so foolish,” he says remorsefully. “We’ve always said they would come after us.”

“I never imagined they’d use Raven’s DNA to do it,” Erik says softly.

Charles sits up straight in his chair. He stares at Erik for a moment before asking quietly, “When did you last see her?” His voice is uneven, constricted.

Erik slowly gets up and takes the seat across from Charles, apparently feeling like the civil conversation and willing questioning from Charles allowed him to. “The day I left for Dallas.”

Charles nods solemnly. “And how was she?”

“Strong. Driven. Loyal.” I can’t see Erik’s face, but I hear it in his voice, how much he really cared for Raven, how highly he thought of her.

“How…how was she?” Charles says again, quieter this time.

“She was…we were…” Erik falters, lowers his head. He clears his throat. “I could see why she meant so much to you.”

Charles shifts in his chair. He seems uncomfortable with the direction Erik’s heading.

“You should be proud of her, Charles. She’s out there fighting for our cause.”

“Your cause,” Charles corrects him. “The girl I raised was not capable of killing.”

“You didn’t raise her. You grew up with her. She couldn’t stay a little girl forever, that’s why she left.”

“She left because you got inside her head!”

“That’s not my power,” Erik says snidely, making Charles turn away in shame, because as of now, that’s not really his power either. “She made a choice.”

Charles’s eyes shine with tears, but at this point I think it’s more out of frustration than actual sorrow. “Now we know where that choice leads, don’t we?” he says with a biting tongue. “She’s going to murder Trask, they’re going to capture her, and then they’re going to wipe us out.”

“Not if we get to her first. Not if we change history tomorrow.”

Logan looks at me pointedly, and I hear his thoughts. _See? He understands, why don’t you?_

_Sure, the murderous traitor is the one who believes the raving lunatic from the future,_ I reply snippily.

“I’m sorry, Charles,” Erik says. “I’m sorry for what happened. I truly am.”

Charles straightens up, the action making him appear antsy, like he wants to accept Erik’s apology so badly but he’s just not sure. He sighs deeply and downs the last of his drink.

“It’s been a while since I’ve played,” Charles says with a bit of force. He examines the board with intensity.

“I’ll go easy on you,” Erik says lightheartedly. “Might finally be a fair fight.”

“You have the first move,” Charles tells him, ignoring his comment.

I hear one of the pieces scrape along the board. Must be moving it with his power. Charles doesn’t seem impressed as he reaches forward to move one of his pieces by hand.

I rest my head back against the wall of the plane. My mind contracts to the point where I can only think of a few things. Most importantly, Sean. I can’t stomach the idea of how scared he must have been before he was killed. But there’s a good chance that Alex is alive, which is both a relief and a curse. If he’s alive but captured it means that he’s still suffering.

Smoke from Logan’s cigar becomes more potent the longer I sit across from him. I hate to admit that I enjoy it. A memory creeps its way to the front of my mind, a memory from more than a decade ago. Logan was lounging in a chair by the window, naked, contentedly puffing on a cigar. I was in bed, lying on my back with my arms tucked under my head, watching him. I remember trailing my eyes over every inch of his body as if I were memorizing it because I knew our time together was drawing to an end. But how easily I forgot about him after meeting Charles…

And somehow Logan and I are supposed to end up together in the future? If I do lose my memory but I end up back with Charles somehow, why didn’t he remind me of what he and I had? He could have easily filled my head with memories. Maybe not everything, but enough to remind me of our relationship. But no, I end up with _Logan?_

My head whips forward with the sudden revelation that we are on a mission to _change the future_. I now have the knowledge of what a possible future could have been, and I can hang on to my life with Charles a whole lot harder.

“Why do you look so happy?” Logan asks in his low, grumbling timbre. “You were pissed off a few minutes ago.”

“I had a thought. Our goal is to stop Raven, right? Stop the Sentinel program from ever existing.”

“Your point?”

I smile and savor the words I’m about to say. “We’re going to alter the future. The time you go back to isn’t going to be the same as the one you left. We could never meet, I could never lose my memory for whatever reason. I’ll be with Charles and you’ll never remember me.”

Logan takes a deliberately slow, deep breath and lets it out in a quick huff. “Sorry to burst your bubble, kid, but you might not get the happy ending you’re imagining. We’re saving one man’s life. There’s no telling how much the future is going to change.”

My immediate instinct is to open my mouth to deny him but he goes on without giving me a chance.

“Not to mention that no matter what happens, I’ll know the world the way it’s been up until the moment I was sent back here. So I _will_ remember you.”

I narrow my eyes. “How do you know your memories won’t change?”

“Kitty told me. She only sent my mind back, so when I return to the future my mind will go from now until that day. I won’t have lived the new future.”

“That doesn’t make any sense. Your _body_ will still be there through the years. What if you get an injury you can’t heal from, like if you were beheaded?”

“Look, kid, I didn’t get a whole science lesson before I was sent back,” Logan says with an irritated sigh. “Kitty told me what I needed to know. My body stays in the future, my mind comes here, and when she pulls me back I’ll know a different past than the rest of the world. Like I just skipped it all.”

“Well, I’m holding on to hope that the future will change enough so that we never meet again.”

I receive a sideways glower from Logan. “If something is meant to happen, it’s gonna happen, no matter how much you mess with the past. There’s always going to be someone who will want to end mutants and weaponize them to do so. If we take one down, another will most likely pop up somewhere down the line.” He leans his head back and closes his eyes. “I’ll see you in thirty years,” he finishes with a tone of decisiveness.

Fuming, I jump up from the couch and stomp down the cabin toward the cockpit, ignoring Charles and Erik’s confused stares. I whip back the curtain, making Hank jump, and fall heavily into the co-pilot’s seat.

“Rough day?” Hank asks jokingly.

“Logan’s a dick,” I grumble. “I knew that back then, but I guess I forgot how _much_ of a dick he is.”

“What did you talk about?”

“Time travel. He insists that he’ll remember me because he’ll be the only person in the future that remembers the old past. And he says that killing Trask may not alter the future _that_ much. Not enough to stop he and I from being together.” I cross my arms over my chest with a huff. “I’ll do whatever I can to make sure I never see him again.”

Hank doesn’t respond right away. He keeps his eyes fixed on the sky, where the sun descends, giving rise to spectacular hues of red-orange, purple and blue that fill the rows of rounded puffy clouds above us. He apparently heavily calculates his next words.

“What?” I prompt him crossly.

“He could be right,” Hank says slowly, then, at my murderous stare, hastily adds, “I mean, there’s maybe a one or two percent chance that he’s right.”

“How? What about Chaos Theory? The butterfly effect? Saving a man’s life is a _way_ larger change than the simple flap of a butterfly’s wings, and already the flapping can cause like, tsunamis or something.”

“Slow down. There’s two points I’m trying to make. First, Logan said he’ll be the only one that remembers the old past. That tells us a lot about how Kitty’s time travel abilities work. Second, there’s fifty years between us saving Trask and basically the end of mutant-kind. A lot can happen. We may spare Trask’s life, but the knowledge of his experiments will still be there. Someone else could come along and find another way to eradicate mutants.”

“That’s sort of what Logan said,” I admit reluctantly. “About someone else coming along to destroy us. It just doesn’t make any sense. If whether we kill Trask or not could still end up leading to mutant destruction, why go through all this trouble?”

Hank shrugs. “Charles would say because it will be the chance to save a life. Peace all over, remember? Also, if they find out a _mutant_ assassinated a human, it will be just like the retaliation Erik got after the President’s assassination. We need to save Trask’s life then, because we’ll be saving mutant-kind’s reputation from further defacement.”

“I suppose. But that still doesn’t explain why Logan will remember the old past and _insists_ we remain together.”

“I didn’t get to that part yet,” Hank says. I roll my eyes, making him grin. “Time travel has been a theory since eighteen ninety-five. HG Wells says that there is a fourth dimension, which is time, and it allows space travel. It’s developed a lot of different speculations since then, but the most uniform one is that you’d need a machine of some sort to transport you through time. Kitty just sent Logan’s _mind_ , which is something completely unheard of.”

“Is it really time travel then?”

“In a sense. I think I understand the concept. When you travel in time, you’re kind of traveling _outside_ of time.” I scrunch up my face in perplexity. “Bear with me,” he says. “Think of reality, normal time on Earth, as a river. A never-ending river. If you were to travel to the past or future, you’d leave the river and skip forward or backward however long you want, then go back into the river.”

“Okay, so it’s a parallel timeline.”

“Not quite. It’s another timeline specific to that person. If you’re just harmlessly travelling, making no alterations to time, you can jump from place to place and still emerge in the original timeline. Kitty sent Logan’s _mind_ back in time – which started him on his own timeline outside of the river – but because we’re going to alter the future he won’t know any other past because he’ll be traveling right back to the time he left, via outside the river.”

“He’d have to stay here and live life the slow way for his memories to change.”

“But they won’t change. He’d know two pasts, the old one and the new one. And he’d be the only one to know.”

“So he’s going to skip the new future and pop back to his body. He’ll know the old past, sure, but I’ll be going along a different path to get there. We could never meet.”

“The Logan from now will continue to live on and experience the new future, though, so there is still that small possibility you could cross paths somehow.”

“But he’ll catch up to his future self won’t he? Won’t that be a contradiction, or a paradox or something? He keeps saying that he’ll know me, that I’ll still meet him in thirty years. Thirty years exactly. Is there something he knows that he’s not telling us?”

Again, Hank stays quiet for a while, deliberating I guess. Anxiety grows in my stomach the longer he takes because it means he’s thinking of ways it could be true rather than outright denying the possibility.

Finally, he breaks the silence. “You know there are parallel universes.”

I narrow my eyes. “They’re _feasible_.”

“Come on, Leah. We’ve got time traveling mutants here. Why is it so hard to believe that parallel universes exist?”

“All right, all right.”

“May I proceed?” he asks sarcastically. I sneer at him. “Thank you. _My_ theory is that each decision someone makes that changes the past or future creates a parallel universe. If we stop Raven, another parallel universe will exist where we didn’t. Somewhere out there will be a universe with the original history. It’s plausible and _extremely_ unlikely that somehow…” Hank sighs deeply.

“What?” I ask. “Somehow _what_ , Hank?”

“The only explanation would be that somehow you end up in that parallel universe.”

I scoff so hard it hurts the back of my throat. “Not only is it crazy to think that somehow I end up on a _parallel universe_ , but if I did, I’d know the future with the Sentinels and be able to stop it, just like in this universe.”

“Yeah you will, but that will create _another_ parallel universe. It’s an endless cycle, which is why there are an infinite number of parallel universes.”

With a loud groan, I hit the back of my head against the wall. “I’m sick of all this time travel shit. I want to go back to before we knew all this, when life was simple.”

“We’d be in for a crappy future, then.”

“We’d be crossing that bridge when we got to it.”

“Once we stop Raven we’ll be able to go home and live out that simple life,” Hank says. “Now that we know the X-Men live on once, we can start up the school again.”

“Yeah…” I sigh softly. Hank placated my dilemmas for the time being, but at the back of my mind will always be his theory. Just like I will try my hardest to avoid Logan later on in life and stay with Charles, I’ll also have to try to keep myself out of situations that could, for some incredulously ridiculous reason, send me to a freaking parallel universe.

“How much longer until we get there?” I ask.

Hank observes the control panel. “Hmm, about four hours.”

“Ugh.” I cross my legs and wiggle my foot around restlessly. When this bores me, I uncross my legs and shift slightly to my left and put my elbow on the armrest, then my face against my palm. It doesn’t take much longer for me to change positions again.

“Jesus, Leah, you’re giving me anxiety!” Hank whines. “Go read a book or something.”

“Ah, no – wait. I just thought of something. What are the Paris Peace Accords?”

“It’s the proposed signing of a peace treaty,” Hank says. “To end the war in Vietnam.”

My stomach lurches and my face tingles from the sudden blood loss. “The war’s going to be over?”

“Leah, don’t–”

“Alex could come home!”

With an incredibly dejected sigh, Hank says quietly, “Please, Leah, don’t get your hopes up. Let’s take it slow, one thing at a time.”

“How could you say that? It’s _Alex_.”

“I know. I’m not saying give up on the hope of ever seeing him again. Just…don’t let it consume you. We’ve got a job to do here. If we don’t stop Raven from killing Trask _at a peace treaty signing_ , who’s to say the war will really end?”

I take his words with a grain of salt. “Well, fine.” Hank nods once, apparently pleased with my response. “But if the war’s not over by the end of the week, we are going to plan a rescue mission for Alex.”

“Leah,” Hank groans.

“It’ll be nothing compared to breaking a prisoner out of the Pentagon.”

Hank smashes his lips together and balls his hands into fists. I almost want to think that I’m pushing him to his Beastie limit, that his skin might ripple with a blue hue, but he’s had years of practice of keeping himself controlled.

“It’s settled then,” I say. Hank doesn’t respond.

When the sky has gone completely dark, I make my way back to the cabin. Logan snores lightly with his head resting against the wall. Erik made himself comfortable propped up, back against the window. His eyes are closed but I can sense that he’s not asleep. Neither is Charles. Overcome with a desire to fill the loneliness I’ve had for years, I tap Charles on the shoulder, take his hand, and guide him over to the couch.

We sit close together, legs and arms touching. I lay my head on his shoulder, he responds by draping an arm around me and pressing his lips to my hair.

“I have missed you,” Charles admits in a whisper.

“I’ve missed you, too.” I feel like crying but the well has run dry. Instead, I sigh softly. “What have we done, Charles? We’ve wasted our lives, wasted years because…because…”

“I’m mostly to blame,” he says solemnly. “I acted childish, I let self-pity get the best of me. I didn’t accept your help when you offered.” He sighs. “I took you for granted, Leah.”

“Just mistakes, I suppose. Mistakes we can move on from.”

I feel his mouth move against my hair, most likely turning into a smile from the tone of his voice. “Well, we know we live to a ripe old age. Plenty of time to make up for it.”

My stomach lurches from his words. “Didn’t you hear? Logan says I get captured and my memory gets wiped. There’s no happily ever for us, apparently.”

“We have control over our lives, over our future. We can make it whatever we want it to be. I won’t let you go, Leah.”

“Sounds good to me.”

We go silent once more, drifting off into a relaxed dream-like state. Just before I truly fall asleep, I notice Logan no longer snores. I crack open one eye to see him staring at me with a maliciously lustful look. I close my eye and ignore him. _Sorry, Logan. Not gonna happen. Not in this lifetime, not in this universe._

At the sensation of the plane descending through the sky, I wake up. It’s pitch black around us, but lights from the city glow, guiding us down to the runway of Le Bourget Airport. We land a little bit after eleven, go through the motions of getting a rental car, driving to the Hotel Royale, checking in. Very mundane things that seem so odd because they’re so simply normal, and we are not.

Our hotel suite has two bedrooms and a pull out couch. Charles and I claim the master bedroom, leaving Hank, Erik and Logan to battle over who will have the couch and who will have to share the second bedroom. After I shower and dress for bed, I sit on a lounge chair by the window and stare out at the lights of Paris. From the sixth floor I can see the Eifel Tower in its backlit beauty.

Hank told us that the peace treaty signing is scheduled for the late morning, and the summit gathering would happen around noon, so Trask’s special meeting will happen between the two. Apparently he’s invited a wide range of officials to hear his proposition for a new weapon. It doesn’t take a mutant’s advanced knowledge to know he’s going to try to sell the Sentinel program. That’s where Raven will be.

We could easily find Raven before she even reaches that room if Charles still had his powers. He stopped taking the serum the night before we left to meet Peter. The only sign that it’s wearing off is that he gradually weakens physically. Tomorrow I might suggest he attempt his power, little by little. Start by reading just one person’s thoughts.

Again, it frustrates me that I can’t use my mind as powerfully as he can. Over the years I’ve wracked my brain for ideas as to why I can’t touch Charles and gain his abilities. I can’t say I haven’t tried, though. I’d touch his skin, invite him inside my head, try to coax a transfer of abilities. Nothing. Once I even touched him, went into his head and tried to manipulate Hank via Charles’s power, but no dice.

Yet again, I question our motives for coming to Paris. There has got to be other ways to stop the Sentinel program if we let Trask die anyway. But maybe it’s more than just saving one person, as Hank said Charles would favor. We’d be saving Raven from the emotional trauma of living with someone’s blood on her hands.

I still don’t know what’s right and what’s wrong here. The golden question is, would I be able to actually kill someone? I’ve definitely _thought_ about it through the years. Abusive foster parents, foster sibling bullies. I put a kid into a coma when I was twelve; no one knew why, they just assumed he hit his head wrong playing tackle football. But I figured out it was me and my deadly touch.

Five years and seven foster homes later, I sent another kid into a coma, but that time I took half a house with him. I don’t really know what happened to the boy, actually. I assume it was a coma. He was one of the good kids, just trying to help. The foster ‘dad’ was raping the girls. All the kids knew, the wife knew. Hell, even the neighbors knew. But there was nothing we could do about it.

One night, he came after me. It was inevitable, but I wouldn’t go down without a fight. I slept with a knife under my pillow, so when he entered my room I stabbed him. Nowhere significant, just the upper shoulder. Thinking back, he was probably expecting my resistance, maybe even looked forward to it. Anyway, I woke everybody up with my screaming. One of the older boys held the foster dad back, another one tried to comfort me. I was vibrating with rage and power, so when our skin touched it was like a bomb went off. Blew up half the house, left the foster family in the rubble. When I ran away, I didn’t even have shoes on.

I stabbed him in self-defense. I probably wouldn’t have cared if I killed him. In fact, I _know_ I wouldn’t. But to kill someone like Trask, who has only hurt me by association? If I was angry enough, yes, I think I could kill someone, and I don’t know how to feel about that.

Charles emerges from the bathroom in a cloud of steam with a towel wrapped around his waist. A flush of tingling overcomes my body followed by a wave of lust. Selfishly I think, I had better take advantage of this night before the effects of the serum wear off completely and he won’t have use of his lower body for who knows how long.

“What?” he says. There’s a bit of mischievousness in his smirk, like he knows what’s going on in my head as I dumbly stare at his bare chest.

I shrug nonchalantly. “Maybe we should have shared the shower.”

“I like the way you think.” Charles crosses the room and leans against the armrests of my chair. I meet him halfway for a kiss and run my hands down his chest. Charles pulls away when my hands reach the towel. “A bit of privacy first, I think?”

With an arch of my eyebrow, I flick my hand in the general direction of the bedroom door and the lock clicks.

“Very sexy,” he says with his lips against mine. I laugh and drop his towel. By the time we reach the bed my clothes are on the floor.


	13. Paris Not-So-Peace Accords (In Progress)

_January 27 th, 1973_

_Paris, France_

A knock on the bedroom door rouses me from slumber. Hank says, “Hey guys, we have to get going soon.”

I groan and wiggle out from Charles’ arms. My body feels stiff, like I slept on stone and didn’t move. “I forgot how uncomfortable it is to sleep with someone in the same bed.”

“Good morning to you too,” Charles says with a yawn.

“Just don’t cuddle the entire time. I can’t sleep properly like that.”

“All right, all right. Let’s get some coffee in you before you verbally abuse the others.”

I sneer teasingly and shove him away.

In the suite’s kitchen a pot of coffee is already brewing. I shuffle into the main room, yawning and scratching an itch on my scalp.

“Don’t you look lovely this morning,” Erik says mockingly from the couch. Apparently Hank and Logan had to share a bed. Kinda sorry I missed that.

I look him up and down. “I had sex last night. When’s the last time you got laid?”

Erik narrows his eyes, accompanying Hank embarrassingly clearing his throat to let me know of his presence. I turn around and find him sitting at the small table, blushing slightly. I forgot how innocent he seems.

“My bad, Hank,” I say with a bashful grin.

I meander over to the coffee and bore my eyes into the dark liquid until the last of the water falls through and the machine hisses out steam. I evenly distribute the contents into five mugs, then search for the fixings for mine. I only find sugar. Gross.

At the table, I slide a mug over to Hank, and one to Charles. Hank puts down the newspaper he must have gotten from the lobby earlier.

“Thanks,” Hank says. He inhales deeply, then takes an experimentory sip. “Mmm. French coffee isn’t bad.”

“How can you drink that stuff black? It tastes awful. I’m going to have to force myself to drink this without cream.”

“It’s an acquired taste.”

Logan stumbles out from the other bedroom wearing only jeans. Hair that is usually perfectly styled sticks out at all angles. His eyes are slits, the brightness of the room too much to handle with eyes wide open.

“Coffee,” he grumbles. I jerk my thumb at the kitchen.

A half hour later, when the five of us are presentable, we head out of the room and down to the lobby. The peace treaty signing is underway in a second floor conference room. I file through the minds of each person present and don’t find Raven.

“Is she in the lobby anywhere?” Hank asks me.

“Hang on, I’m not done yet.” I zip through the last nine people’s minds and then shake my head. “She’s not here, she’s not at the signing. What is she waiting for?”

“I don’t know. As far as I can tell, this archway is the main access to the half of the hotel with private conference rooms. There’s no attachment to the guest rooms.”

“What about back entrances? Security access? Fire escape?” Logan asks.

“We cover all our bases,” Charles says. “Logan, would you mind checking it out?”

“No problem.” Logan stalks off.

“Now what?” Erik asks.

“We wait,” Hank replies.

I lead us over to a small sitting arrangement. “I think you should try to use your powers,” I tell Charles quietly as we sit down on the couch. “We could really use you right now.”

“I’ve been trying,” he says. “I feel echoes of thoughts if I touch them one at a time. It will come back to me, I just don’t know how long it will take.”

“Just keep at it. Try it with me. I’m closest, that should help.”

Charles nods and closes his eyes in concentration.

Patience is a virtue, but I get antsy and agitated as we await a murderer-to-be so we can save her victim. I feel the same thing from Charles’ aura. He struggles to read my mind but he’s not completely focused on it. We get closer and closer to the time we’ll meet Raven again. Even Erik and Hank both throw off waves of uneasy anticipation.

Logan returns from scoping the place out and falls heavily onto the couch. “There’s one security entrance in the parking garage. Some people arrive that way. Should be easy enough to cover.”

“Yes, but Raven’s a shapeshifter,” Hank says. “Leah will have to be there to check everyone in case she enters in disguise.”

“And if she doesn’t, Leah will miss out on tracking Raven from in here,” Charles finishes.

“Well, I’ve got my work cut out for me,” I mutter. “Wait. What if we cause a scene at the security entrance? Everyone will be forced to divert to the main entrance and come around this way.”

“It could work,” Hank says with a shrug. “Who will do it, though?”

In unison, all eyes turn to Logan. He glares at us. “Why do you have me doing all the dirty work?”

“Erik can go with you,” I suggest. “Start a brawl. You guys are burly and threatening-looking. People will cower away in fear.”

Erik rolls his eyes. “Fine.”

“It’s a quarter to eleven,” Hank says after checking his watch. “Trask’s meeting will start soon. You should get going.”

Logan and Erik get to their feet and head back the way Logan came. It’s time for me to monitor all of the people in the lobby. There’s a lot of them, but a few stick out, not because they’re thinking of Trask, but because they’re mainly communists.

Two Vietnamese dignitaries pass us and head for the stairs. They converse casually in their native language, but when I read their thoughts it’s not hard to put meaning to the foreign words. They’re eager to see Trask’s secret weapon.

I scan through the rest of the people and come to rest on a group of communist nation representatives. Soviet, Bulgarian, Romanian. One from Hungary. Ten altogether. They congregate, greeting each other with thick accents but speaking English, then cross the elegant marble floor in the direction of the stairs.

“No sign of Raven,” I say. “What’s she doing?”

“I don’t know, but here comes Trask,” Hank says, and nods to his left.

My eyes widen. I mouth at Hank, _That’s Trask??_

Bolivar Trask is not at all what I expected. He’s a dark haired dwarf dressed in an expensive custom pinstriped gray suit. How funny for him to want to target mutants, people considered different and freakish to humans, when he himself is considered different and freakish by his peers.

“The summit doesn’t begin for another hour,” a Nixon aide informs Trask. “The hotel's arranged a private room upstairs for your special guests. They’re already gathered.”

“Thank you. There will be plenty of time,” Trask says as they pass us and disappear beyond the archway.

I check everyone in the lobby one last time. Nobody draws my attention. I expand my mind and focus on Trask. He’s just entered the conference room. As a precaution, I check everyone in the room again. Fourteen people altogether. I locate my comrades and push into their thoughts.

_Look alive, people, the meeting’s started,_ I tell them, and project Trask’s speech into their minds.

_Good afternoon, everyone_ , Trask greets his guests. _Thank you for coming. Congratulations on winning the war._ His attention is drawn to an American military man passing out folders to all the dignitaries. His name is at the corner of Trask’s mind: William Stryker. I feel waves of confusion from Logan as, through our connected thoughts, he works through some sort of possible recognition.

_Now, I know you all have hands to shake and photos to take downstairs,_ Trask continues, _So I will get right to the point. There is a new enemy out there, an enemy that will render your arsenals useless, your armies powerless, and your nations defenseless._

_He acts as if_ we’re _the ones with weapons of mass destruction,_ Erik thinks snidely.

_You’ll need a new weapon for this war,_ Trask says dauntingly as Stryker returns to his side and opens a large briefcase. He powers it up and spins it around before we get a chance to see what’s on the projected screen. _I call them Sentinels. Named after the ancient guardians that stood at the gates of the Citadel. They have the aeronautic capabilities of a Harrier jet, armed with guns that can fire off more than two thousand rounds per minute of thermo-ceramic ammunition. But size, power, speed, you could find that at a Lockheed or Boeing._

_Wow,_ Hank thinks. He forgets we’re all inside his head. All of us throw angry thoughts his way. _What? I get that they’re evil machines, but it doesn’t mean they can’t be impressively built._

Trask holds up a small white device. _No, what makes the Sentinels so special is the ability to target the mutant X gene. A genetic guidance system that can lock onto a mark half a mile away and won’t trigger unless it’s identified a target._

With some effort, I prod into the minds of the audience to gauge their reaction. The majority are interested at best, a few hanging on the edge of their seat. But one…one is nervous.

_Hang on,_ I say suddenly. I flit back through the minds, counting. There were fourteen people at the start of the meeting. Now there’s fifteen.

“Raven’s up there!” I shout so suddenly the others cringe.

“How?” Charles asks bewilderedly.

“I don’t know!” I reconnect us with Trask.

_With this weapon, there will be no human collateral damage,_ Trask goes on. _If I turn it on, the system couldn’t even activate in here._ He presses a small button. Within seconds, a red light flashes to the quiet beeps as it registers a mutant’s presence in the room. _Unless…there’s a mutant,_ he says with sudden interest.

_That’s our cue,_ Logan growls. We scramble to our feet and run to the stairs.

With curiosity, the tiniest of grins pulls at the corner of Trask’s mouth, as if he’s so confident that he couldn’t have made an error in the design he’s positive there’s a mutant among his guests. He swivels the device at each of them in turn until it falls on a Vietnamese general I don’t recognize. The general smiles uneasily at the accusing faces of the group.

“There has to be some kind of mistake,” the general says.

_My machines don’t make mistakes,_ Trask says pointedly. _What are you?_

The general gets to his feet. Stryker takes up his gun and aims to fire.

_No, don’t kill it,_ Trask says. Reluctantly, Stryker returns his pistol to its holster and replaces it with a taser gun.

Hank grabs my arm and spins me around. “You need to get in there, now!”

“How?”

Hank’s eyes widen. “ _TELEPORT!”_

“Oh, right, right.” I close my eyes. Anxiety clouds my head and it takes a good ten seconds before I disappear. I reappear just inside the doors of the conference room in time to see the general shapeshift into Raven’s natural form. As she starts to take down every man in the room with ease, Trask backs up into a wall. Fear floods his mind, drowning out the curiosity he had moments before. But then he notices me, and the curiosity returns. He knows the doors didn’t open.

“Raven! Stop!” I shout, stepping forward, but the dignitaries that have the better sense to flee shove me aside in their escape. I can only push back and watch as Raven takes up a gun, leaps on the table, and aims it at Trask.

Then she takes notice of me, looking absolutely dumbfounded, which stops me from yanking the gun from her hands with my power. Charles and the others arrive just as Stryker takes Raven’s lapse in attention to shoot her with the taser gun. She falls to the side, convulsing. With an angry roar, Erik retaliates by flinging the metal taser probes from Raven’s chest to Stryker’s. Now he falls to the side, convulsing.

Charles runs to Raven. “We’ve come for you,” he tells her as he takes her hand. “All of us. Erik and I, together.”

Raven’s yellow eyes brim with tears. “I never thought I…I’d see you again.” She turns to the rest of us. The aura of my friends is full of longing and relief, except for Logan. I find him staring down at the convulsing Stryker with the same confusion he had earlier, only stronger.

“Logan?” I put my hand on his shoulder and enter his mind.

Recalling pain from memory is just slightly less intense than the original time, but the pain in Logan’s mind goes down to his bones. Literally. Blurred green tinted thoughts focus into what might be flashes of memory, but Logan can’t seem to remember where they came from. Men in military uniform, Logan submerged in clear liquid, a laboratory in a cave. Dozens of thick needles pierce Logan’s skin and he screams underwater.

The present Logan lets out a growl. He leans back against the wall, hyperventilating. He’s losing control, losing his mind, like the connection with his future self is faltering. He grips my arm like a vise, fear shining in his eyes, but I can’t focus on him anymore. Even though I’m immersed in Logan’s thoughts, another aura in the room changes so drastically it demands my attention. Not surprising, though, that Erik is the one who drew me away. He is now filled with a purpose, a motive, that dominates his mind as it emits a primal urge to kill. The gun Raven dropped on the table flies into Erik’s outstretched hand and he aims it confidently at Raven.

“Erik, what are you doing?” Charles says. The panic, the helplessness, in his voice is unmistakable.

“Securing our future,” Erik says. There isn’t a hint of remorse in his words. “Forgive me, Mystique. As long as you’re out there, we’ll never be safe.” Erik had to come up with this plan on the spot, or he tried _extremely_ hard to keep himself from thinking it in my presence, or else I would have felt it.

Once again, I’m the only one who can stop Erik. I can’t fail this time. I abandon Logan’s mind, stretch out my hand and try to move the gun, keep the safety on, crush the bullets in the chamber, but Erik’s too strong. His face is emotionless, expressionless as he keeps hold. He doesn’t even bother to tell me to stop.

“Use your powers, Charles,” Raven urges. “Stop him.”

“He can’t,” Erik says smugly. Raven doesn’t pause to question this. She slowly gets to her feet, weakened by the taser. With one tiny shake of her head, as if she can’t believe the man she loves is about to betray her, she turns on her heel and sprints down the table, aiming for the window at the other end of the room.

Erik’s finger moves to the trigger. I exchange a frightful glance with Hank before he lunges at Erik and tackles him to the ground. But still, the gun goes off. I pull myself from Logan’s grasp and wave my hand with force, sending the bullet off to the right. From the ground, Erik shoots again, and again. I throw the second bullet into the wall, but the third lodges in Raven’s calf just before she disappears out the window.

**To Be Continued...**


End file.
